


compass (broken or otherwise)

by coffeepot418



Series: we live today [2]
Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: 2min not so much. but they get better, ??? kind of? its complicated, Action, Angst, Assassins & Hitmen, Death, Enemies to Lovers, Fae & Fairies, Light Angst, M/M, Magic, Minor Violence, Multi, Past Abuse, Polyamory, Royalty, Some Fluff, Strangers to Lovers, Supernatural Elements, binsung have the healthiest relationship dynamic i got jealous writing it, but hes sort of blackmailed back into it, but like as an entity, chan's a prince, established binsung, former assassin jisung, technically, technicallyyy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:00:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 35,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28850973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeepot418/pseuds/coffeepot418
Summary: jisung’s been running from his past for years, when it finally catches up to him with an offer he can’t refuse—kill the Prince, and they’ll remove the price on his head. chan's been thrown into a world he doesn't understand, and has to make difficult choices to survive—including who to trust. changbin just wants them all to live.(can stand alone)
Relationships: Bang Chan/Han Jisung | Han, Bang Chan/Han Jisung | Han/Seo Changbin, Bang Chan/Seo Changbin, Han Jisung | Han/Seo Changbin
Series: we live today [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1998508
Comments: 23
Kudos: 63





	1. 1.1 - Jisung

**Author's Note:**

> listen i was so tempted to name this j.one i reign forever for Literally no reason
> 
> overall logistics: despite the way the ages fell i have everyone using hyung as they would with their actual ages, just assume they all did some kind of check to see how physically old they are or smth and went off that. 
> 
> **cw: age gap, jisung and changbin are ~300 and chan is 25.** jisung’s the only human of those three but he’s that old for magic reasons. **Mentions of bullying/abuse. Mild description of exorcism-like accidental torture. Also quite a few death mentions in later chapters,** but no mcd, and probably no graphic descriptions of death. Also this is probably minor but **implied offscreen sexual content.** One panic attack (not named but mild description). Mild homophobia for like a sentence. 
> 
> ok in terms of time… stuff………  
> if u read my first fic in the series this is pre any of that happening so this is theoretically set in like the 1930s? idk i dont remember my own timeline. the point is pretend everything’s like it is in 20XX (technology etc, no big wars brewing in South Korea) despite that because time’s fake anyway 
> 
> if you Didnt read the other fic:  
> levanter is the name of jisung’s store. changbin’s a siren. humans have magic when they have distant nonhuman ancestors and those lines converge right (recessive alleles or smth). they live in a town called haven. thats all the relevant info i think

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw mild mention of drugs in the first paragraph or so

The first time Jisung sees the guy he thinks he’s hallucinating. And okay, maybe that’s something to do with the pufferfish venom Changbin made him try that may or may not be the ocean’s equivalent of LSD. He’s still not sure if Changbin was fucking with him. 

Anyway he’s walking home from the bar alone, because the other three wanted to stay out a little longer, when he turns the corner and sees a man standing at the dock. It’s a clear night out, the moon is big and bright and—he makes a mental note to check his protection spell. It’s close to half moon now, he’ll need to renew it then—there’s no mistaking a shadow or a blur for a person, Jisung’s certain there’s an actual person. 

Very certain.

But he steps forward and the person startles and turns enough to glimpse him and then is just… gone. So he stores that in his mental files, makes a note to ask Changbin and Minho if they’ve had any newcomers lately. It’s not suspicious, is the thing. It’s not like it’s illegal to look at the ocean. But Jisung has a funny churning in his gut and he trusts his gut, so if there was a person and it wasn’t just the result of poorly thought out maybe-drugs, then it’s worth investigating. 

In the morning, though.

* * *

Surprise surprise, he forgets. 

The second time he sees the man (and he’s fairly certain it’s the same man) he’s dead sober. “Hey man,” he says, coming to a stop at the edge of the beach.

The man startles again, looking more than alarmed when he sees Jisung, which is concerning for several reasons. First, anyone who can recognize Jisung is bad fucking news. Second, someone recognizing Jisung means they know who he is. And if Jisung squints, he swears the guy looks familiar, but he can’t really tell, since he’s wearing a mask. 

“You’re new to town?” Jisung asks, but the man’s taking off before he can try to get a response. Jisung doesn’t bother chasing him. If the man has a bone to pick, he can pick it on his own time. One man won’t bring the cavalry down on him, anyway. He hopes.

“Nah,” Minho says when he asks, later, while they’re both lazing around doing inventive spellwork because Changbin and Seungmin are busy and they’re bored. He squints at Jisung from where he’s floating upside down (it helps him think, he claims, but Jisung’s pretty sure he just likes to freak people out), and waves a hand to bring a book towards him. “And the wards are fine, I checked. If he wanted to cause trouble we would know. Hey, do you think if we replaced variable h with a different function…” 

And so both of them get sidetracked. But at least they fix the last bump in the widespread repellant charm.

* * *

_ Levanter _ doesn’t have a bell, but it does have an alarm system. A fairly sophisticated alarm system, if he does say so himself. 

So the man enters, and Jisung feels the  _ fae-nonhostile  _ tag ping in his head. So no grudges then, or if he does have a grudge he hides it well. The fae bit is concerning. But, well. Jisung’s friends with Hyunjin, isn’t he? Kind of. Some fae are okay. Hopefully this one is too. He trusts Minho’s wards as much if not more than he trusts his own, which means a  _ lot, _ so he can say with confidence that this visitor doesn’t mean him harm. Something in him, though… something in his gut is telling him  _ danger. _

“Welcome to Levanter,” Jisung says, pasting the fakest smile on his face. “Can I help you?”

“My friend needs to go underground,” the man says. His voice is… it’s changed, somehow, maybe a spell. He really doesn’t want Jisung to know who he is. That is maybe perhaps very bad. Depending on how this pans out.

Jisung frowns at him. “Like…” 

“People are looking for him,” he says. “He needs to lose them.”

Usually that’s a red flag. It should be a red flag. But Jisung double checks his wards and they still say non-hostile, and, well. It’s not like Jisung’s always been on the right side of various laws. 

“What kind of losing are we talking?”

The man seems surprised he’d acquiested so quickly. “He needs to completely disappear off any radar.”

That’s fair. And because the man’s fae, Jisung’s gonna assume that means court radar too. Court detection is thorough, and a bitch to get past, so… “That’ll cost you.”

“I can pay.”

Jisung snorts. “Can you?” He taps his display so it flickers and shows the policy he usually enacts. “Memory equivalent of value of item.” People are all too willing to fork over cash if they have it, but ask for something personal and they balk. As they should. It raises the stakes in buying shit like this, shit Jisung can pull off flawlessly hundreds of times—but does he want hundreds of radar-evaders out in the world? No. Not everyone is on the run for their own protection. 

The man deflates. “You can’t just take money? I have enough money to double whatever you ask.” 

“Careful,” Jisung jibes. “Maybe I’ll triple it on my own. But no.” 

“You’ll really take nothing but memory?”

“Sorry,” Jisung says, leaning back in his chair. A spell like this… it’d be a good memory. A very good memory. Like… the moment you know your life is on track. Forgetting to check the weather and ending up chasing your friends through the rain, laughing all the way. Cuddling close to someone you hold dear and feeling your worries settle. The kind of memories people overlook for weddings, etc, but to Jisung, at least, those things are more powerful. It’s also the kind of thing people are reluctant to share. 

The man sighs, thanks Jisung for his time, and exits the shop. 

Jisung watches him leave, and knows with absolute certainty that this won’t be the last he sees of him. 

* * *

“Do magical marriages require explicit consent from all parties?”

Jisung slowly blinks down at his graph, then up at Seungmin. “Why are you asking me?”

“You’re in the room.” Seungmin pinches the bridge of his nose. “And you’re the only person I know who’s magically married.”

“You know my other half.”

“Mer don’t do complex magic. And I was referring to you two as a collective.” 

He’s glaring halfheartedly into the spell model in front of him, now, and at a glance Jisung’s pretty sure it has exactly nothing to do with magical marriage. Transmutation. Something like that.

Seungmin’s right about the magic thing, though. Mer, and most other non-magic heavy species, rely on raw or elemental magic, or pre-prepared spells/rituals. Magic heavy species like fae and well trained human magic users (exempting witches, who usually keep with elemental magic) lean more towards complex magic, with experimental combinations and equations that might or might not work. Think math versus science with a minor overlap in physics. 

All types of magic have their upsides and downsides, but complex magic’s biggest up is energy conservation. Doing the calculations in your head in a split second before drawing a sigil to freeze a bucket of water takes significantly less magic than pure elemental magic would, and use cases like weather control or pure conjuring (creating something out of nothing) become possible for even the weakest magic user, where without complex magic it might take a tremendously large amount of power, so much so that it is completely impossible without being in the top few on the Park Magic Density scale. 

Complex magic, then, is largely what makes the fae so powerful.

It’s also what makes human magic users the most hunted. Hunters of the “supernatural” are usually more fearful of human users than creatures, for whatever inane reason—Seungmin’s explained it to him, but he honestly doesn’t get it, and other than the recluse Choi family (fae hunters, he knows. And he’s completely fine with their presence as long as they  _ keep  _ to fae) on the outskirts of town, he doesn’t interact with humans much ever anyway, so it doesn’t matter.

Not to say mer or others  _ couldn’t  _ use complex magic. But it doesn’t come as easily to them, just as Seungmin or Minho couldn’t efficiently use elemental magic if they tried. 

(Jisung’s different. He’s, well,  _ special.  _ He might be the same species as Seungmin, but he’s a warlock before he’s human, and his magic capacity is high. Freakishly high, according to most. Hyunjin used to match him, but other than him, Jisung hasn’t met anyone with levels like his own. Hyunjin took him to test it once, to see his max power output, and his ambiant magic is around a 9.9, but his purposeful power output literally broke the scale. He, personally, knows  _ how _ his magic’s so potent, but he leaves it a mystery to everyone but Changbin, who technically shares his magic pool, and Hyunjin, who was the one to explain it to him.)

Then, as if magic types (languages, if you will) weren’t confusing enough, in come magical marriages.

A magical marriage is a fusion of (traditionally) two beings’ magic, so the magic, which exists on a plane separate from the physical, automatically pools and generates together. It’s breakable, but at a high cost, and trying to “divorce” has a very high death rate. It’s also easy for one party to take advantage and hoard the collective magic for themself, completely weakening the partner and leaving them helpless, so they’re not taken lightly.

Jisung and Changbin have been together for a while. It’s probably been fifty ish years? Not long for mer, very long for humans—again, long story, Jisung’s older than he looks because he’s special. They knew each other for 100 and they’ve been “married” for 15, and they trust each other entirely. They have to, to coexist like this. Being one cohesive system, one unit, drawn to each other, while also being separate. 

“Yeah,” Jisung says, refocusing. “Explicit consent from both. The ritual’s very involved and it does need honest complete consent, so it can’t even be coerced.”

“Both,” Seungmin muses. “But what if you added a third? Could Changbin do it without your permission, or vice versa?”

That gives him pause. He’s not unfamiliar with polyamory, especially given Mer society being generally polyamorous… but it never really was something he considered. He trusts Changbin wouldn’t do that without his knowledge, but… 

“It’s a bind on the magic,” Jisung says, slowly. “It attaches to the magic storage space, and if someone was trying to attach to existing combined magic storage… you’d only need one person from the existing pair. Theoretically. But since magic generation comes from both people, the third person’s magic could reject the new addition like a virus in a human body, which wouldn’t end well, so to be safe, everyone should be involved in the ritual.”

Seungmin groans, and rubs his eyes. “Fine. Okay. That fucks up half of my math.”

Jisung grimaces in sympathy. “Good luck, dude.”

He wonders, vaguely, if he can do anything to help, but Seungmin isn’t the type to shy away from asking if he needed it, and he’s drawn back into his own project, anyway.

Hyunjin had asked, on a call this morning, if Jisung’s felt off in any way recently. He hadn’t, and had said as much, but that just made Hyunjin _ more  _ worried, to the point where Jisung was actually considering burning the gas to get to him and make sure he’s doing okay. But Hyunjin had done that thing he does, sometimes, when Jisung’s being particularly stupid, the weird nose scrunch slash anxious magic pulse, and Jisung backed down. It hadn’t stopped him from digging, though—and apparently the fae community’s going haywire around Australia. Not much info on why, but Jisung supposes word will travel down the grapevine soon. It’s far from him, and that’s all that matters. Regardless, he’s still poking around, refining his spying magic, and that’s been his project for the day.

The rest of the day passes quick, no more strange visits from stranger strangers, and Jisung asks Seungmin to ask Minho to look into the guy. Hopefully it’s nothing, but it’s worth a check. Seungmin goes home ruffled from his own lack of progress, and Jisung doesn’t bother telling him about the smudge of charcoal on his cheek—mostly because Seungmin leaves all his equation notes in neat stacks along the wall, and Jisung thinks he could stand to have a little bit of muss in his life. 

Changbin somehow slips in without him noticing, though that’s more a sign of Jisung’s exhaustion than his sneaking abilities. 

“Hey,” Changbin says, and Jisung grunts something unintelligible even to himself, still wiping down the table in the back room, which had gotten covered in lemon juice after one of Seungmin’s additions went wide and knocked into his shelf of various magically potent liquids. Changbin back hugs him, and he can physically feel his body drain of tension. “Long day?”

“Something like that.” 

Jisung explains the stranger, and his gut reaction to him. Changbin listens, humming along in the right places, and somewhere in the middle Jisung finishes wiping and waves a hand to lock up the door before waddling up to the stairs. Changbin refuses to let go so Jisung heaves a laborious sigh and traces a short-range teleportation sigil to get them to the second floor.

Changbin hums in satisfaction when they land and they waddle, again, into the magically locked private area of their apartment. It’s keyed to them, with guest access to Minho and Seungmin and Hyunjin—it’s physically impossible for anyone else to enter unless Jisung or Changbin is there to allow it. 

“But it doesn’t matter,” Jisung finishes, and Changbin finally lets go so he can collapse onto the sofa. “He’s probably gone, now. Oh, Seungmin asked this thing about polyamorous magical marriages. Like, would one of us be able to add another person without telling the other?”

“Probably,” Changbin says. “We’re essentially one person, magically.”

“But white blood cells!” Jisung says, eyes wide in earnest. 

“Wha—wait, like—oh—”

They’ve been together for years. They know each other well enough, now, that Changbin can follow his unspoken train of thought.

“Have you ever done allergy immunotherapy?” Changbin asks. “Slowly exposing your system to the thing it wants to reject, until it acclimates to it.”

“So you think,” Jisung says, frowning, “I could add Wooyoung or someone else in your choir and we’d be fine, but if  _ you  _ tried to add them—”

“I’m used to their magic and you’re not, so if your system isn’t given the explicit command to accept them, it wouldn’t. Mine… mer choirs pool magic all the time, so I’ve built up a… resistance, I guess?”

“But Minho and Seundmin wouldn’t work,” Jisung adds. “Even though we’re around them all the time, because neither of us really blend magic with them.”

Changbin nods, frowning off into the distance.

It’s an interesting theory. He’s not sure of the actual likelihood of that being true, but he supposes this is more Changbin’s realm than his, despite Mer not being the biggest proponents of learning theory, due to the whole handling magic itself thing. 

He wonders, then, if former friends—friends who used to be close like Changbin is with his choir, but then fell apart drastically—would be accepted, or rejected. If Changbin added—

But he knows how Jisung feels about them, and they won’t ever find him here, anyway. He wouldn’t, so it’s pointless to question.

The stranger just has him on edge. The stranger is fae, and that’s reason enough to be wary.

“Hey,” Changbin says, turning Jisung’s face towards him by the chin. “You’re spacing.”

Yeah. He is. Instead of arguing, he makes grabby hands and Changbin rolls his eyes and climbs into his lap, so they’re sitting chest-to-chest, Jisung’s arms around Changbin’s waist and Changbin’s arms around Jisung’s neck, and Changbin hooks his chin over Jisung’s shoulder on reflex. He thumbs over the scars on his side as well, hand already having snuck up Jisung’s shirt. Jisung suppresses a shudder. “Don’t worry about it, hyung.”

“I wasn’t worried until you said that.” 

And he does sound worried. Jisung immediately feels like shit, because the last thing he wants ever is for Changbin to worry over him. “It’s nothing, really.”

“Han Jisung.” He’s not scolding, not really, but Jisung’s definitely feeling appropriately chastised. 

“That new guy…”

“You don’t like him.”

“It’s not that I don’t like him. You know I don’t let my personal feelings take over in situations like this.” Changbin nods into Jisung’s neck. “But he makes me nervous.”

Changbin draws back a little, to look him in the eyes. He’s frowning, which makes sense, because Jisung  _ never _ gets nervous. Even Jisung thinks the whole thing is weird. That the man is provoking a fight or flight instinct that Jisung honestly forgot he even has.

People don’t make him nervous. Not even Hyunjin makes him nervous anymore, which is saying something, because Hyunjin is… well, he’s Hyunjin. Jisung used to be the biggest ball of nerves known to existence, before he met… his ex partner, let’s put it that way… but he’s worked so fucking hard to get past that, to get to a point where he’s secure enough in his abilities that he doesn’t  _ need _ to get nervous, where he knows he’ll be ok even if someone attacks him. And yet. 

This man, this random fucking man.

Even from the moment Jisung saw him at the pier, for that split second before he vanished, Jisung’s gut has been screaming at him.  _ Run away, _ it tells him.  _ Danger, DANGER. _

Jisung is, objectively, the most dangerous thing in this goddamn country, okay, that’s an actual quantifiable, measurable fact. Fuck his gut. Fuck whatever’s happening there. This guy can fuck off, out of Belt and out of Jisung’s life. 

Yeah. 

Fuck.

“Do you think he’s not here peacefully?”

It’s not  _ impossible _ that he’s bypassed the wards. “It’s possible. I don’t know.”

“You’re just not used to strangers,” Changbin says. His grip tightens a bit, then relaxes like he forced himself to. “It’s probably fine.”

Neither of them believe him. 

When the two of them officially got together, Hyunjin gave him shit for  _ weeks. _ He also gave  _ Jisung _ the shovel talk, even though Hyunjin and Jisung have known each other  _ way _ longer than Hyunjin’s known Changbin. Favoritism at its finest. 

Somewhere in the middle of that shovel talk, Hyunjin’d told him to come clean. About where he came from, why he’s the way he is, why he drinks a drop of milk before bed every night to check it hasn’t gone sour even if he’d just gone to the store to buy it, why he leaves windchimes all over his house, why he never takes off the charm around his neck. 

And he had. Changbin had listened. It hadn’t affected their relationship, but it had affected Changbin’s blood pressure. Jisung had tried to convince him that it’s fine, that no one will be able to track him down, but Changbin hadn’t fully believed him. Hence the worry here. 

And Jisung hates making him worry. 

“Let’s go to bed,” Jisung says instead of answering. He shifts forward, and Changbin’s legs wrap around his waist, and he stands, Changbin clinging to him like a koala. 

“Don’t try to distract me,” Changbin says, muffled into his shoulder. 

Jisung snorts, and deposits him on their bed. “I’m not.”

“You are.”

“Not.”

“Are.”

“You didn’t ask a question. I assumed the conversation was over.”

Changbin rolls his eyes so hard Jisung’s surprised he doesn’t pull something. “Whatever.”

“Don’t whatever me!”

Changbin doesn’t deign that an answer, yanking Jisung down on top of him instead. He lands with an  _ oomf _ , not bothering to catch himself and just crashing down onto Changbin’s chest. Changbin wheezes. 

“That’s what you get,” Jisung grumbles, and Changbin rolls his eyes again and tugs him so they’re lying back-to-chest. It happens fast enough that Jisung doesn’t have time to call dibs on little spoon before Changbin’s already settling in that position, and Jisung pouts for a hot second before deciding not to protest. “Goodnight,” he says. 

“Lights,” Changbin says back. 

“You’re so fucking romantic, baby,” Jisung moans, just to be a brat, but he flicks a little impact magic at the light switch anyway. The room goes dark.

And Jisung, in all his worry, forgets to drink his milk.

* * *

Changbin notices before Jisung does. 

It’s barely 6am, according to Jisung’s phone, but Changbin’s bolting upright and staring at him with the weirdest expression on his face. 

“Milk,” he says, somewhat frantic.

“Oh,  _ shit. _ ” Jisung launches out of bed. Changbin follows him at a more sedated pace, but Jisung bolts to the kitchen, yanking open the fridge. How did he forget? He never fucking forgets. 

Changbin hands him a cup before he goes chugging the carton. Jisung pours, and for a moment nothing comes out. Then… 

“Oh, god,” Changbin gags, covering his nose and turning away. 

It smells rancid. There’s honestly no better way to describe it. Just, rancid. It comes out in chunks with a little trickle of cloudy water. It is, to put it simply, so fucking spoiled that by all intents and purposes it should be from last year. 

Changbin bought the carton two days ago. Two. Days. Ago.

“Okay,” Jisung says, staring at it. “I’m not drinking that.” The drinking bit’s just to check if it’s curdled, anyway. He’s pretty sure that the answer to that is obvious.

They toss the carton. Lia’s store should be open, if one of them goes now, but Jisung isn’t willing to part with Changbin at this point, and he isn’t really willing to leave the house either. Not now. Changbin tries to bargain with him but Jisung’s  _ very _ firm when he says that if he leaves his sight Jisung will probably lose his shit. It’s not worth it. They can make Minho go on a store run for them.

“He’s gonna kill you,” Changbin mutters, sulking in the background as Jisung makes the call. 

“Let him try,” Jisung says back. 

To say Minho’s unhappy to be woken up is an understatement. He forces the call (a minor summoning, which essentially functions like a phone call) wide open, so Jisung has no choice but to listen to him gripe the entire way. He complains and he threatens to go back to bed but not once does he actually turn around or hesitate and Jisung loves him for that. 

“Your milk,” he says when he arrives, holding it out with a flourish. “I took the liberty of buying you some bread, too. Ah!” He yanks both items out of Jisung’s reach. “I’ll give them in exchange for your first born child.”

Jisung, completely unprepared to deal with Minho this early in the morning, blinks for a moment, stunned, his chest doing an odd pang he doesn’t like, before he gathers himself and flicks his wrists and summons the food to him. He wiggles the cartoon in Minho’s face and steps back so he can come in. “Thanks, hyung.”

“No problem. But if you ever wake me up like that again I’m liable to murder you.”

They both know he’d do it a thousand times over, if it’s Jisung calling. Jisung graciously doesn’t mention it. 

“Hyung,” Changbin greets, lounging on the couch.

Minho does a jaunty salute in lieu of response. Changbin snorts. 

“Find anything on our new friend?” Jisung asks, pouring a thankfully non-congealed shot of milk. 

“No,” Minho says. “For one—I can find him, but I can’t pin him down.”

“What?”

Both Changbin and Jisung stare at him, off put. 

“He’s fast,” Minho clarifies, as if they didn’t already get that. “He’s not staying in one place at all. He’s just… zipping around the outskirts of Haven.”

“So he really doesn’t want to talk to you,” Jisung says, partly amused, partly alarmed. 

“It seems he’ll only talk to you,” Minho agrees. “He might be waiting to come back and see if you’ll change your mind. He must really want that spell.”

“There’s lots of other mages he could ask if he needs,” Jisung says. “If he was really, truly desperate, he’d be gone the second I said no.”

Minho shrugs, then scrunches his nose. “Oh. Do you need help cleaning out your house?”

“Yes, please. Stand there,” Jisung says. “And—yeah, there. You remember the sigil right?”

Minho gives his assent and Jisung jogs to the back. Changbin watches him go but seems content to stay with Minho, which is fine.

“Now’s good!” He calls, and he can hear the sizzle of the first sigil, so he hurries to get started on his own.

The milk and bread thing is a lure. Faeries get distracted by fresh milk and bread, and will turn milk sour and bread to wheat before they’ll go after the residents of a home—Jisung checking the milk is just insurance that they haven’t gotten to it yet.

Which means that there was fae magic here, last night.

Which is in no way a good thing.

He hasn’t been found, not really, because his and Minho’s wards are too strong for that and anyway if he was found, he’d be dead or dragged back to the court. But fae have ways to send out magic without knowing location—they just can’t, themselves, approach. The magic is searching for him, and if it finds him, if it gets past the milk and bread distraction, it will infect him and convince him to reveal himself, or bring himself back, and that’s the last thing he wants. It would take a few days, but it would happen eventually.

So.

He draws his sigils, pushes out the magic, and with a burst of energy like sparks the residual faerie magic is burned from the residence.

“Good over here,” Jisung calls.

“Here as well.”

He returns to the kitchen and does a scan of all three of them, relieved when none of them are even touched with magic he doesn’t recognize.

“Do you think he’s hostile?” Changbin’s saying.

“No,” Minho says. “I can read his intent. He’s just worried. Anxious.”

“He knows who I am.”

Jisung didn’t mean to say it, doesn’t want to worry them more, but… 

Minho exhales loudly. “That’s… not good.”

“He would’ve tried something already if he was… right? Because he had you alone three times,” Changbin says.

Jisung shrugs. “Maybe. Probably. If he was actually after me and was staking me out he wouldn’t have given away he knows who I am. He got my guard up.”

Minho inclines his head. “You know them best.”

“It should be fine,” Jisung says, more firmly now.

“Okay. I’ll keep an eye out,” Minho says. “I have to go, though, Seungmin’s—ow!” He cups his ear, face contorting into annoyance. “Seungmin’s being a little bitc—OW.” He disappears in a swirl of black smoke. Presumably to go pinch Seungmin back.

“This was too much for 7am,” Changbin says, pausing in the middle for a yawn. “I’m going back to sleep. Goodnight.”

“Night,” Jisung says, and Changbin doesn’t protest him staying up because he knows him well—Jisung won’t sleep, after this. He’s too riled up, anxiety pumping adrenaline through his body. His leg’s already bouncing up and down. Usually he’d go run off the energy by adding icebergs to the arctic, but he doesn’t want to leave Changbin. He’s barely okay being a room away, eyes darting back to their bedroom door every five seconds out of sheer worry. Maybe he’ll go do some jumping jacks, or something.

Something thumps in the bedroom, and Jisung’s up on his feet and at the door in an instant, heart in his ears, but Changbin just pokes his head out, ruffled and annoyed, and says, “I can hear you vibrating from here.” 

Jisung backs up, sheepish. Changbin grabs him by the shirt and yanks him in. “Too nervous to leave me?” He doesn’t even need to wait for Jisung’s answer, already knowing he’s right. “Let’s work off that energy then, hm?”

_ Oh,  _ Jisung thinks, shivering when Changbin cups his cheek.

Yeah, okay.

That works too.

* * *

The stranger comes back a few times, before Minho announces he’s gone from the area. Every time, he asks if Jisung’s changed his mind, if it’s possible at all to pay with money, or objects, or  _ anything  _ but memory.

And every time Jisung says no.

At some point it just becomes about the principle. He could, if he wanted, but he’s not sure about making allowances for a faerie. 

But that’s behind them. Probably.

Once the stranger’s gone, things go back to normal—as normal as they can be, anyway. Jisung’s still a little on edge, checking and rechecking the border wards almost obsessively, but other than that… 

Minho and Seungmin break up,  _ again,  _ about a week after the stranger disappears. It’s enough to keep both Jisung and Changbin busy, with both of them separately keeping the two occupied so they don’t antagonize each other more. 

It’ll be fine, It’ll only last a few days, but it’s still disheartening to see them like that.

Jisung met the two of them before Changbin, before arriving in Haven. He and Hyunjin were still bouncing around the country, not daring to stay in one place for too long, when they’d pulled up to a tiny, seemingly tightly knit largely religious town. They were welcomed to the inn, and everyone was friendly, but Jisung, still on edge from everything he’d been through up til that point, had gotten extreme horror movie vibes. 

He and Hyunjin poked around and found nothing. Hyunjin flat out refused to go near the little wooden church at the end of the main road, so Jisung waited until he was sleeping and snuck in himself.

It seemed like a normal church, at first. A few rows of pews and an altar, but he’d found a staircase going down, and had, against his better judgement, descended. 

And then there was the screaming.

He’d heard it about halfway down, and it had only gotten worse as he’d continued walking. He’d had a hand on the doorknob, too, drawn to the sound, forgetting to be scared, when someone yanked him back and covered his mouth before he could yell. 

“Are you stupid?” The other had hissed, furious. “No one’s supposed to be here. If you see it, it’ll kill you.”

It?

“You’re new,” the boy—because he looked eighteen years, at most—said, slowly pulling back. “You’re the visitor at the inn? Dad says you and your friend are probably gays and I shouldn’t speak to you.”

“Uh,” Jisung, unfamiliar with the human concept of sexuality at the time, had said. “What does ‘gays’ mean?”

The boy frowned at him. “Um. Nothing important, I guess.” He introduced himself as Kim Seungmin. The pastor’s son. Jisung gave his surname, as he’s used to doing, and Seungmin gave him a weird look. “Just Han?”

“Just Han.”

Seungmin refused to let him into the basement, and Jisung didn’t want to give himself away so he acquiesced and retreated back to the inn.

In the end, Jisung snuck back down, invisible this time, and watched with not insignificant horror as the pastor stood over a boy around Seungmin’s age, yelling butchered Latin over the boy’s screams. Seungmin was there, in the corner, shrinking in on himself.

Jisung could see the mystery boy’s soul, of course, he knew that wasn’t a human boy, at least not anymore. But it didn’t matter. Hyunjin’s not human, and he still hurt sometimes. This boy was clearly in pain and he didn’t know what to do to help.

The boy writhed and writhed and spoke in multiple overlaid voices and sometimes his eyes would go black and sometimes smoke would escape his mouth—he cried, too, sometimes, begged and pleaded for the man to  _ stop it hurts please,  _ or direct to Seungmin,  _ Minnie, Seungminnie, please help me, I’m sorry, what did I do to deserve this? It hurts Seungminnie… Please… Why are you letting him hurt me…  _ but the pastor kept going.

On some level, Jisung understands. He was trying his best with what he had.

But demons are a kind of fae, and no human tongue—god/God’s word or no—will expel a faerie.

“Let me,” he said, unveiling himself, and pushed the pastor aside to approach the not-boy head on. He ignored the spluttering and angry protests to bind the not-boy in place and reach forward, directly, and oh.

Hm.

Whatever the pastor was doing had some kind of effect. But it wasn’t a good one.

Pieces of demonic essence were quite literally fused into the boy’s soul. And demonic essence is corruptive on a good day, corrosive on a bad day, but it looked like they were lucky on that account, because it was simply infecting, not eating. The boy wouldn’t be human ever again, but Jisung could get the parasitic sentience out, at least. 

“You twisted them together,” he said aloud, poking at one of the looser places. The demon hissed at him. He backed up, just a little.

“What do you mean?” Seungmin asked. The pastor still seemed at a loss for words. 

“I can’t take it out entirely. But I’ll try my best.”

He had. And he took out the sentience. But like he’d predicted, Minho wasn’t human when he was done.

The entire town was religious. Good or not, he was, by their definition, a demon, and they didn’t want a demon anywhere near them. Even his own family refused to see him.

Hyunjin and Jisung offered to take him with them. He declined, and left on his own. 

And they didn’t see him again, for a long while.

“Why do I bother,” Minho grumbles, sulking so hard he has a literal dark cloud puffing up around him. “I don’t care about him.”

Jisung nods agreeably, barely paying attention. 

“I mean,” Minho continues, “If he wants an angelic, boy next—I’m a fucking demon! Why doesn’t he—” He cuts himself off with a groan. 

They’d been best friends from childhood, from what Jisung gathered. Good little church boys. But Seungmin dipped into something he shouldn’t have out of curiosity, and Minho paid the price. 

“He wants me to be something I’m not,” Minho says. 

Jisung winces.

It’s not like he was doing anything important, he thinks, closing his notebook and finally looking up. “He loves you. You know that.”

Minho shrugs and looks away. “Yeah.”

When Jisung next saw them he was alone. Hyunjin had to ditch him for safety reasons—someone had caught scent of Hyunjin’s presence and they couldn’t risk anyone finding out they were together—and someone caught up to Jisung, and Minho saved his life.

Seungmin had been with him.

Apparently, Minho had spent about a week alone before Seungmin tracked him down, and they had a long freak out about a lot of the hows of that happening, and then they decided to travel together, and then they ran into Jisung.

They’d asked for help, with figuring themselves out—and Jisung agreed. It’s a long story, but they’d all stuck together and Seungmin and Minho had maybe not gotten together under the  _ best  _ circumstances. It results in a lot of turmoil.

Like this.

“What was it this time?”

Minho sighs. “I mentioned someone from the demon’s life as if I, personally, knew them.”

“Ah.”

Seungmin likes to pretend Minho’s just like him, a human mage. But he’s not. It’s sort of the thing, like, when there’s a big life changing traumatic event but it only left aftereffects on one person—the other just wants to pretend it never happened. 

Especially because, technically, Seungmin was at fault, and he knows it. 

When Jisung pulled the demon out of Minho, it died. (He had to essentially tear it in half, something that shouldn’t really be possible, but Jisung’s used to being different in that way.) The parts that remained—the power, half the memories, the inclinations and demonic Laws—all of that latched onto its host and warped Minho’s soul to accommodate it. So Minho has the demon’s memories, could _technically_ be Named by the demon’s name, and… well, technically, that night he _became_ a demon. That demon, specifically. Like reverse possession.

So Minho remembers the demon’s memories as if he was the demon. He’s confessed to Jisung about it scaring him, sometimes—the lack of a line between him and it—but there’s not really anything Jisung can do to help. Minho’s an anomaly. No one they’ve talked to has ever heard of something like it happening before.

“It was just that, then?”

Minho scowls. “I said some things back, it escalated.”

“What’d you say?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Minho kicks at the wall, petulant, and swings up into the air to hover upside down. “I’m petulant and mean. It’s my nature. He should be used to it.”

“Used to it doesn’t mean putting up with it.” Jisung rubs his temples, already exhausted. How many times must he play therapist…? He loves them, but they’re  _ so bad  _ at feelings. “Did you blame him again?”

Minho looks away like a scolded dog. 

Jisung sighs.  _ “Minho.” _

“I didn’t mean it,” Minho mumbles, and he crosses his arms. His shoulders hunch. 

“You two need to have a  _ conversation,”  _ Jisung says. “Please. For my sanity, if anything.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Min.”

“I don’t.”

Jisung frowns, and Minho must take that as passive aggression or something because he drops back to the floor and says, “I’m gonna go. I’ll see you later.”

“Sure,” Jisung says, watching him go. “See you.”

* * *

“That could’ve gone better.”

Jisung shrugs, and stretches out on the couch, determined to occupy the entire space. “Do you think they’re done for good?”

“Nah. They just need to talk.”

“And the likelihood of that happening is exactly zero.”

Changbin snorts. “Give them a little wiggle room. I’d say point zero zero zero zero zero…”

Jisung laughs, but it comes out more of a honk. He covers his mouth and they giggle together. “Fuck, were we ever like that?”

“Neither of us were directly responsible for the other’s complete physiological change, so I don’t think that was ever on the table.” Changbin swings a leg over his waist and curls up on top of him. Like a little backpack. Jisung tries not to coo. “... zero zero zero one percent.”

“So Seungmin’s really mad this time?”

“I think so.”

“Damn.” Well then. No easy temporary resolution.

They stay quiet a few moments more before, “Changbin?”

“Hm?”

“Do you think we’re still in our honeymoon stage?”

Changbin snorts. “Stages are bullshit, there shouldn’t be a loss of anything down the line. We argue. But we resolve our arguments quickly and neither of us yell or make it worse.”

Jisung hums. He is kind of right. “Love you.”

“Ah…” Changbin’s blushing, judging by the heat of his cheek on Jisung’s neck. He brings a hand up to clumsily pat Jisung’s hair. “Love you too.”

Minho likes to joke that their relationship is so healthy it’s scary. The only major argument Jisung can remember the two of them ever having was when they first met, and there were several misunderstandings and territory disputes all around before Changbin insisted everyone take five steps back and talk calmly to figure out what the hell happened.

Hyunjin says the heart eyes started there. To be fair, Changbin tells him later that he was unnerved by Jisung’s staring because he thought he was seizing him up to see if he’d win in a fight—at the time, he’d thought he was being subtle about the admiration. He’s pleased it sort of worked?

Either way, after that they’d been very careful to over communicate, as they were the two most powerful in their respective parties, and thus de facto leaders/peacekeepers. Of course, this burden disappeared when they relaxed around each other and combined their wards and upgraded from settlement to town, but they still kept up the habit.

Seungmin and Minho on the other hand grew up in an environment that left scars on them that convinced them oversharing might result in their deaths. From the gay thing to chaining Minho up in the basement to trying to burn Seungmin for being a witch, they both became clams when it comes to anything personal. 

“We shouldn’t butt in,” Jisung mumbles. He’s drifting off a little, but Changbin is, too… both of them too lazy to move to their bed. 

“Yeah…”

Minho comes back the next day, completely fine. They weren’t actively worried, but it’s better for Jisung’s anxiety levels to have his friends close rather than far. 

Of course, him getting mail exacerbates that anxiety.

He doesn’t get mail often. He  _ shouldn’t  _ get mail—the anti-tracking wards he has on both him and the town as a whole are  _ strong— _ but fae magic is strange, and he supposes the delivery magic on the letter is similar to the magic that rots milk, because every so often something gets through.

The letter arrives as Minho does. Changbin’s already out with his choir doing their Mer things, and Jisung’s sitting in the shop area, when  _ nonhuman-human-friendly  _ registers, and he looks up, since that’s a particular combination only Minho triggers. “Doing better?”

“Maybe.” He waves an envelope in the air like he never disappeared. “You have mail.”

Jisung frowns, and takes it. They head to the back without a word. 

“It’s…” Jisung squints. “Oh, fuck’s sake.”

Jisung can outrun a lot of things. 

The fae court is not one of them. 

“You’d think,” he says, tossing the letter—summons, probably—into an enchanted fire, “that they’d give up.”

“You know better than that.” Minho lounges on the sofa, watching with some amusement as the letter tosses itself right back out. 

Jisung groans. “They’re so. Fucking. Stubborn.” He punctuates each word with a throw. The letter continues to remove itself from the potentially harmful situation. 

“Can really see where you get it from.” 

Jisung whirls around and points the now smoking letter at him. “Don’t be a smartass.” 

Mnho shrugs and stuffs his face with chips. “Maybe read it,” he suggests around his mouthful. 

“If I read it they’ll know I received it,” Jisung grumbles. 

“And? They can’t track you down.”

He pauses. “Hm. You have a point.”

“Always do.”

“Unequivocally false.” He tears open the letter, tossing the envelope in the fire. It goes, happily, letting out a noise similar to a fart. 

_ Han Peter Jisung, _ the letter says, and he makes a  _ face. _ Ugh, fuck them, pulling the Name card. Not that it does anything on paper. 

_ Han Peter Jisung, _

_ This is your first and final official notice of the trial of His Majesty the High King’s bastard half-human son. You are hereby invited to attend as a spectator due to your past record and the nature of the trial, where you will be granted diplomatic and bounty immunity (and all this entails as detailed in article 93301a-b of the Rulings of the Trooping King) during, as well as fifteen minutes preceding and succeeding, the exact timespan of the trial from the start time as noted below to the ruling and dismissal, where the dismissal is guaranteed to occur post start, all of this contingent on your attendance.  _

_ Your presence is voluntary, and we will not contact you about this again. _

_ T&O bless you, _

_ The Office of the Trooping King. _

“Ah,” Jisung says delicately. “Hm.”

Minho perks up. “Not what you expected?”

“No,” Jisung says. He squints at the paper. It does  _ seem _ to be legit. “Hey, take a look at this.”

Minho scans it, letting out an impressed whistle. “They really want you there, huh?”

Yeah. Not a single exploitable loophole. Usually he’d watch out for potential dismissals/rulings before start times, but that’s covered… other than that, either the articles don’t actually cover diplomatic and bounty immunity, or the location means more than fifteen minutes required to get in or out. 

He checks the articles in Hyunjin’s copy of self-updating rulings, because they always purposefully fuck up his. Which is fair, considering he’s both not fae and also, wanted for quite a high bounty. 

“Articles cover it,” Jisung says, after the fifth scan. “Tracking, maiming, bugging, collecting, otherwise interfering… it’s a complete truce zone.” See, the articles are normal fae writing—convoluted and full of holes. The letter’s too straightforward. 

Something’s wrong. 

Or maybe they just want something from him. 

That’s always an option. 

“You should be able to get in and out of that place in about a minute,” Minho says, blinking away the inkiness that creeps into his eyes when he projects himself. “Actually, it’s you. Unless they ward it between now and then, you can do it in ten seconds.”

“Huh,” Jisung says, sitting back. The back of the letter has the promised directions, which he promptly memorizes. 

“I can cover your shop,” Minho says, patting his shoulder. “Sate your curiosity?”

“Doesn’t that kill cats?”

“I find sufficient reanimation effects in satisfaction.”

Jisung laughs and tosses the letter into the fire. It goes, finally, with a crackle. 

* * *

He tells Changbin, of course. Changbin tries to get him to stay but he can’t, because Jisung  _ needs  _ to do this—it’s been years and nearly every memory of them is fucking shitty and he might have a panic attack when he gets there and sees people he used to know but they’ve called him back for some fucking reason, they’ve given him an airtight promise and fae don’t break promises and he needs to know  _ why.  _

Changbin understands, mostly, when he explains himself, and he doesn’t like it but he doesn’t protest anymore. 

(He can see how Changbin wonders if there’s something Jisung left unfinished. He’s not sure himself. 

Part of him hopes he’ll see Felix.

A larger part of him hopes he won’t.)

He’s not stupid, of course. He knows he should tell someone he’s going, someone who can actually get to him if something goes wrong. Minho could, but not without great risk to himself. Changbin can’t. Seungmin doubly can’t.

That leaves him with one. 

_ “This is stupid.” _

“You’ve said that five times already.”

Hyunjin groans, massages his temples, and moves slightly out of frame of the communications spell. Jisung can’t see what he’s doing but then he feels a slap on the back of his neck and flinches, instinctively swiping behind him. There’s no one there, of course, it’s just magic—“Dick,” he mutters, but there’s no real feeling behind it.

_ “Don’t get tripped up,”  _ Hyunjin says.  _ “I’ll come get you if you do, but please, for both our sakes—” _

“I’ll try my best.”

Hyunjin squints at him.  _ “Your best generally isn’t good enough.” _

“Hey!”

_ “You know what I mean.” _

Yes, okay, so Jisung may be responsible for, like, ninety percent of the times they’ve gotten caught. And what? This time will be different.

“I wish you were here,” Jisung says quietly. He pillows his head into his arms.

_ “I wish I was there too,”  _ Hyunjin says.  _ “But you know I’m working on something important, here.” _

“I know.” Hyunjin’s in Japan, looking into something to do with the mountains. It’s a long project, he’d said, but there’s something wrong, everywhere, with the balance, and no one else is doing anything to figure out what. It’s the kind of magic work where he can’t afford to waste energy on teleporting back to Korea, even for this. Not unless something goes wrong.

_ “Be careful, okay?” _

“Always am.”

_ “Liar.” _

“You know it.”

Changbin’s waiting for him when he leaves the room, expectant. “He’ll help?”

“He’ll keep an eye out,” Jisung says.

Changbin sighs. “If you die, I’m gonna get Minho to bring you back so I can kill you again.”

“Me dying isn’t the worst case scenario, actually,” Jisung says, only a little teasing. “My alive bounty is significantly higher, isn’t it? They’d wipe my mind completely and—”

“Okay,” Changbin says, shoving him lightly. “Yes. I get it. But the worst case won’t happen. Right?”

“Right.”

Changbin sighs again. He lies back on the couch, presses his palms to his eyes. 

There are several crumpled up pieces of paper on the counter, and Jisung’s sure that if he flattens them out he’ll find lyrics. Angry or worried lyrics, he’s not sure, but Changbin’s clearly still working through this.

The ticking of the clock is loud. They both sit still in their silence until Changbin reaches out and Jisung lets himself be pulled in. He’s lucky, he thinks, wrapping an arm around Changbin’s shoulders. 

He’s lucky to know him. He’s lucky he and Hyunjin came here when they did, he’s lucky he and Changbin met. 

“I don’t want to lose you,” Changbin says quietly. “You’ve been running from them for years and now you’re just… walking back into their hands like it’s nothing.”

“It’s not—it’s not nothing,” Jisung says. “And I’m not walking back into their hands. That letter’s airtight and if anything happens I have Hyunjin to come get me. Again. And, worse comes to worst—” he hesitates. Can he promise this…? “Worse comes to worst I have… people I know. Old allies. They’ll help me for a price.”

“Make sure that price isn’t your life,” Changbin says.

Jisung can only nod. “I’ll do my best. I can’t promise anything, but I’ll do my best.”

He was raised as a fae. Fae are taught to lie.

Yet he can never find it in him to lie to Changbin.

* * *

The trial’s being held on a half moon, which means he can’t renew his protection ward, but Seungmin and Minho have seen him do it often enough that they should be fine doing it in his stead. They even gang up on him—which is a fucking miracle considering they’re still not talking—to shove him out of the caves when he tries quintuple checking their markings. 

It’s in Austria. The Pleiades will be above Großglockner at witching hour in the fae realm, which for some reason is relevant…? He didn’t bother to read the explanation, only doing the relevant calculations to find the coordinates. 

Arriving is easy. Hopefully leaving will be just as much. 

He steps inside the near-invisible boundary, and immediately knows it won’t be. There are wards now—no teleportation. And he isn’t even in the fae realm yet.

He finds the rock he needs, with the inscription, and lets magic liquify in his hands, dripping down to his fingertips with the viscosity of blood. It’s a deep red, which maybe helps the blood imagery. He swirls a nail into the markings, tracing out the inscription. When he finishes he cuts off the magic flow and shakes the residual drops off. The rock cracks, and reality shifts somewhat, just a bit to the left then sideways and stretched and glitching, then back to normal. Well, normal slightly to the right.

“Good evening,” a man says, tilting his head in curiosity. His bottom half is furred and hoofed like a goat and he stands just beyond the rock. “You are… human.”

“I was invited,” Jisung says, holding up his letter, Name removed. He shifts back when the man moves to take it. 

“Hm,” the man says. “So you were.” He glitches, like the gateway had done, and reforms. “To the pole, then the maple tree. You must know the way, if you were invited.”

There’s scorn there. Jisung ignores it, drapes his magic like a cloak over the area that surrounds him. Gatekeepers are minor, anyway. He only needs a peek to get the truth. “To the willow then the silo, yes. Got it.”

“That’s not what I—”

“It’s what you meant,” Jisung says cheekily. “Speak what you mean, man.”

“But—”

“Bye!”

The realm changes, sometimes, on a whim. There’s no pattern, no rhythm… it’s just suddenly different. Trees instead of mountains. Lakes instead of trees. A complete revamp of the maze of roads. Those who spend enough time in the realm, who have enough magic, can sense trails. Paths. Places common fae go. Magic breadcrumbs. 

Jisung used to think it was beautiful. The whole dimension, lit up like stars and connected in roads like constellations. 

Now, he just wants to get in and get out. He doesn’t bother watching the stars wink.

He finds the castle that way—and stands in front of the door, deliberating.

He’s here. He, in fact, was the one person who convinced himself to come. There’s two minutes til the trial starts, and yet…

He can’t bring himself to do it.

“Oh. You came.”

The voice is… it’s familiar. He knows him. That could be good, or… 

A hand enters his vision, pushes open the door. A body follows, bushy tail stiff in agitation. Ears pressed back flat.

“Innie,” Jisung says.

Or it could be very, very bad.

“Han,” Jeongin says, and his mouth is already curling up into a snarl.

Part of Jisung—the part that’s romantic in a sense of not just romance but perfectly wrapped endings, happy reunions, the part that’s become… well, the part that’s become soft, domestic—wants to hug him. Another part wants to kill him, bloodthirst rolling in Jisung’s gut for the first time in years, angry and vengeful. The last part—the part of him he desperately wants to get rid of but never will, the part that’s still the self he became while living in the fae realm—knows exactly what would happen if he tried.

The scars on his side give a phantom twinge at the memory. The worst wound he ever sustained—not because of severity, but because it came from a friend. 

“After you,” Jisung says, stepping back.

Jeongin glowers, but steps in anyway. Jisung follows sedately, and tries to match his pace so he doesn’t get too close. At one point Jeongin stops, though, and Jisung stops too until Jeongin’s growling raises to an audible level. He stumbles to catch up, and they walk in step with each other for the rest of the way.

“You should have stayed away.”

Jisung turns to look, but Jeongin’s staring steadfastly ahead, only his still-stiff tail betraying him. “Why?”

The growls increase in volume again, and Jisung shuts up.

He doesn’t want a fight. And if he provokes Jeongin, he’s going to get a fight, and he’s going to want to see it through.

So.

“Because I don’t want you back here,” Jeongin says, spinning and shoving him so he stumbles back a few steps.  _ “Traitor.” _

Oh, that’s rich. Who tried to kill who, again? “I’m not here for you,” Jisung says lowly. “I’m here because I was game enough to bite the bait.” Jeongin’s still spreading his magic out like layers of caution tape, but that’s easily snipped. Jisung blinks, and brings two fingers together like scissors, cutting through easily, and pushes past him without much resistance. He pauses at the end of the hallway. 

“Coming?”

The court hall is already full, leaving them no option but to sit next to each other. Jeongin’s clearly displeased, ears flattening back against his skull, but there’s nothing either of them can do. Jisung tries to raise his hood against the stares, but it does no good. Word of his presence is already spreading like a wildfire. He slumps into the chair.

“This message marks the commencement of the trial of His Majesty the High King’s bastard son! In absentia he has no representative.”

Jisung sucks his teeth. “Uh. Not much of a trial, is it?” He almost feels bad.

Jeongin doesn’t respond. Everyone else around them is leaning away, pretending not to notice the sizzling tension, so none of them bother to respond either. 

Like he’d predicted, it’s not so much a trial and more an opportunity to whale on the poor bastard. They don’t even know his  _ Name,  _ since the mistress managed to keep that away from the King. And the King himself hasn’t bothered to show.

It’s just fucking sad at this point. 

After a sufficient enough time to exaggerate the Prince’s misdeeds, the jury leaves to discuss. This is looking to be a waste of Jisung’s time.

“I thought Felix would be here,” He says, mostly to himself, undecided between relief and disappointment.

Jeongin hears, if his ear flicking is anything to go by. “Felix  _ left,” _ he hisses, scrunching himself so he’s even further away from Jisung, still refusing to look at him. “Just like you.”

Oh.

Well.

_ That’s  _ news.

“What?” 

“He’s gone,” Jeongin repeats bitterly. “Three cycles ago. Just vanished. Price on him’s higher than the price on you. No one will tell me what he did.”

Three cycles is about two months… how hasn’t he heard anything about this?

“I thought they killed him. But they wouldn’t put a price on him if they did. I found out my only remaining friend isn’t dead from a fucking bounty.”

“Innie—”

“Don’t,” Jeongin snaps. “You don’t get to give me pity, traitor.”

Jisung yanks his arm away again and faces back forward, schooling his face and shoving down the boiling anger. There it is again.  _ Traitor.  _ As if Felix and Jeongin ever gave him anything to betray.

“Decision made,” the judge booms. “The ruling is guilty. Full charges. Bounty—twenty billion units alive and completely subdued. Minus thirty thousand per injury volume as defined in section 5c of the Rulings of the Trooping King. One million dead.”

Jisung gapes. What the hell kind of gap? One million is nothing—no experienced hunter will go for it—and all the rookie hunters will be scared off by the twenty fucking billion alive bounty, leaving the only ones gunning after the Prince to be the hardcore hunters who are trying to catch him alive.

Speaking of.

What. The fuck?

Jisung’s bounty is high—but it’s not that fucking high. His is five billion alive, one billion dead. Jeongin says Felix’s is higher… but still. 

Twenty fucking billion. 

Fuck.

He’s almost tempted to take it himself, retired or not.

“They really want him, huh,” Jeongin murmurs, awkwardness seemingly forgotten. They stare at each other, and then the gavel hits, and Jisung jolts. 

“Fuck.” He leaps over the back of his chair, leaving a spluttering Jeongin behind as he focuses on the magic he needs to follow, and sets a timer.  _ 14:59. _

“Han!”

He curses again, rounds a corner, but someone catches his elbow.

“Are you taking the bounty?”

He doesn’t recognize the woman holding him, but she clearly knows him. As do the several others who follow her.

Ah. Yeah. They can’t hold him back maliciously, but they can hold him back genuinely. Subsection  _ mu _ of the relevant article, or something. He probably should’ve thought of that.

But he’s out of practice.

“If you’re taking it, it’s not worth trying,” someone complains from the back. He grunts instead of replying, trying to twist out of the grip in his wrist, but it’s like a vice. 

“Just say yes or no,” the woman snaps.

He stops, squints at the amount of people in the hall. He could… 

He lets his magic unfurl, lets himself feel relief as they all flinch back as one, magic sensitive as they are, and wraps it around himself, and becomes—

Fuck. He meant to become a bird. 

He yips once and takes off. Foxes are fast, too, he supposes. He’s thinking too much of Jeongin.

He isn’t bothered much from then on out, but what’s done is enough. When he returns to human form at the gate, the gatekeeper’s nowhere to be seen and the countdown in his head reads  _ 6:23. _

It might not be enough.

He almost makes it to the exit when a hand wraps around his wrist, claws digging into his skin.

His side twinges again.

“Innie,” Jisung says, trying his best to keep the shake out of his voice. “Let go.”

Jeongin hums, but if anything his grip tightens. Jisung half wonders if he’s going to take another swipe at him. The timer’s still ticking and Jeongin isn’t budging, and the last time they were alone together outside the immunity the trial gives him, Jeongin gave him three pretty marks to remember him by and Jisung almost died. 

_ Breathe, _ his inner voice, which sounds suspiciously like Changbin, tells him. He does, counts the beats internally. The fog lifts a bit but he’s still too frantic for this confrontation. And without panic, that energy’s heating the stove. The anger’s still cooking, and the pot is finite. 

“It was supposed to be the three of us. Do you remember that?”

Jisung closes his eyes.  _ In… two… three..  _ “I remember.”

“Just us. Us against everyone else. But then  _ you,” _ Jeongin hisses the word, and Jisung shrinks away, gritting back words he never said, “left. You left us. Both of us. And then it was me and Lix. And now Lix is gone too. Why did you leave? Why did you leave  _ me?  _ We were happy until that piece of—”

“Happy?” Jisung snarls right back, fury bubbling over in the flash of magic that takes him back out of Jeongin’s grasp. He hadn’t wanted to talk about it—hadn’t wanted to say anything, but that word—fucking happy. Happy his ass. “If you actually believe I was happy here, you’re fucking delusional.” There’s so much he wants to say, but all of it just… gets stuck in his throat. “Fuck you J—fuck you Innie.”

Jeongin reaches forward, and to his credit does look legitimately confused, but Jisung pushes him back. 

“But we—”

“You,” Jisung says, shutting that down immediately. “You were both happy. I wasn’t. I was fucking miserable.”

His feelings for the two of them are convoluted, and he doesn’t know if he’ll ever untangle the mess of knots there, but Jeongin’s easier to deal with than Felix would be, at least. Jeongin didn’t do to him what Felix did.

And he knows to some extent that they didn’t know better. They were fucking kids.

But he still looks at Jeongin and sees—Jisung remembers how he used to be—what he used to be—how meek and quiet and gullible—and he can’t deal with that.

He can’t.

“Wait.” Jeongin’s wiped the confusion off his face, and before Jisung can think to stop him, or maybe because of residual sluggishness infecting his limbs in Jeongin’s presence, Jeongin presses a thumb to Jisung’s forehead and pushes a memory through that connection. “Good lu-uck, Hannie.” The mocking tone is a complete turn from the anger before. Jarring enough that Jisung doesn’t think to retaliate before Jeongin’s shoving him back through the gate into the mortal realm.

Jisung doesn’t have time to question it.

Jeongin doesn’t follow him when he breaks into a dead sprint on the human side, timer counting down  _ five, _

_ four, _

_ three,  _

_ two, _

_ one. _

Jeongin isn’t even in the crowd that instantly materializes just a moment too late to catch him, where he drowns in hands and limbs that aren’t Jeongin’s for the smallest second before reforming reality and bending dimensions so he pops back into existence in a field in Italy.

Jisung takes a breath, apologizes quietly in Italian to a startled farmer, and takes his memory of the event.

Then he checks himself for trackers or bugs and quietly returns to Haven.


	2. 1.2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> jisung makes a decision. 
> 
> [wanted.  
> han: 5b alive/1b dead.  
> the Prince: 20b alive/1m dead.  
> felix: 7b alive/1b dead.  
> hyunjin: 1m alive/0 dead.]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> same overall cws + unhealthy past relationships and some description of magic fights. 
> 
> i took minor influence from Terry Pratchett's portrayal of death, mostly formatting
> 
> also for some reason ao3 inserts number lists on some of my lines? idk if you see number lists they arent supposed to be there
> 
> also NONE of skz are going to end up bad people by the end of the fic. some of them might be framed as irredeemable right now but that's bc it's jisung's pov and while he has the right to see it this way, he is very biased. ill try my best to make their arcs realistic and i think rn due to the circumstances around jisung/felix/jeongin's friendship they are, but ill be revising as i go and lmk later on if it ever feels like anyone's being forgiven too quickly

“I don’t know,” Jisung hears, and he blinks the sleep out of his eyes and stretches, crumpling the sheets. It’s Minho, he thinks. Out in the kitchen.

“He seemed shaken,” Changbin murmurs.

Jisung had barely managed to drink his customary shot of milk the night before. He remembers arriving—outside the door so as not to startle Changbin—then stumbling inside and nearly falling. He’d waved it off as magical exhaustion, even as his personal stores of magic rolled agitatedly inside him, tumultuous ocean on a stormy day, begging to be used, slipping through the cracks. Changbin had to practically drag him to bed, and had put up no fight in Jisung’s whispered request of being the little spoon tonight. 

He hadn’t fallen asleep until he’d traced and retraced the protective magic in the room, and on Changbin. The knowledge that it’s there and the double, triple, octuple checks were the only reason he’d been able to relax enough for his tired subconscious to take over and force him to shut down.

“I’ve never seen him shaken. Well. Once… but that was… before.”

Before Haven.

Before Changbin.

“It was bad,” Minho continues. “And maybe this is…”

“I’m awake,” Jisung calls, voice hoarse. He swings his legs off the bed and forces himself to make the very long (to his tired body) trek to the kitchen. Seungmin’s there too, to his surprise, though he and Minho are as far away from each other as they could possibly get. They all watch him enter, mild trepidation lingering in the air. He doesn’t know why, they know he knows they wouldn’t talk shit about him, or anything. “It’s similar, yeah.”

Minho watches with a wrinkled nose as he pulls out a sleeve of oreos for breakfast. “I didn’t mean—”

“It’s okay,” Jisung says. He sits down at the table and tears the sleeve open. “I know you’re just worried.” He gets through three oreos before he speaks again, and they let him take his time. “I saw I.N.”

Minho’s head tilts, likely involuntary, and Jisung nods in assent at the silent question. Minho’s eyes ink over. Changbin reaches out, slowly, and Jisung reaches back, inches the chair over so he can rest his head on Changbin’s shoulder. 

“I.N.’s the fox?” Changbin checks.

“Yeah.”

Changbin’s the one person who knows everything. Hyunjin might’ve encouraged him to tell Changbin, but he never ever pushed for Jisung to tell _him_ , and Jisung appreciates that because he’s not sure if he could keep it secret, if Hyunjin asked. He owes him so much.

“I see hands,” Minho says, frowning. His head tilts further.

“Before.”

Jeongin’s words echo in Jisung’s mind, and he buries his face in Changbin’s neck.

It’s still too much.

“What did I.N. give you?” Minho asks.

Jisung had almost forgotten.

He locates the foreign memory easily, unwrapping it from its bounds, and allowing himself reluctantly to get sucked in. 

* * *

In front of him (Jeongin, technically, since this is, from what Jisung can tell, his memory) stands the King. That, on its own, is cause for worry. The throne room is as grandiose as he remembers—but he doesn’t care about that right now.

 _“Jisung Peter Han,”_ the King says in English. _“I hope this message finds you… hm. Well? For now. If you’re seeing this you attended the trial of my unfortunate offspring, and you know what lengths I’ll go to get him back. The price is hefty, and yes, we will pay. But for you...”_

Fuck. He knows what he’s going to say. He can see it in the King’s glee as he leans forward, can see it in Jeongin’s vibrating excitement—

_“If you bring him back to me, without so much as a single serious injury, I swear I will remove the price on your head. You’ll be free to go wherever you’d like without fearing the court’s intervention.”_

Why does he want the Prince so badly? He can produce more heirs, it’s not a forever sole heir problem—Jisung would assume it’s a firstborn thing if he wasn’t perfectly aware that the King’s had many half-human children who didn’t make it so far as this one. 

_“Of course, I’d be entirely for it if you wanted to rejoin our ranks—anyone would be a fool to deny_ you _allegiance. But as it stands, you’re not fond of us.”_ He grins, pointed teeth fully on display. _“Or me. Regardless. Accept if you want, decline if you want. I’ll be here, waiting. Jeongin was thinking of taking the bounty as well, so time’s ticking, Peter. Better decide fast.”_

* * *

“No Felix,” Minho’s murmuring when Jisung emerges from the memory. “He ran? Do you have any idea why?”

“He was copacetic with the court last I saw him,” Jisung says. He shakes his head slightly to clear it. “So no.”

Minho studies him and nods. “Okay. I’ll try to locate him. Maybe you can take that bounty.” That bit’s joking, at least, but Minho doesn’t know how hard Jisung’s considering it.

But then… the twenty billion… 

“Look into the Prince as well, if you can,” he says. 

Minho whistles. “Going for it?”

“Maybe,” Jisung says, resigned. “The memory… the King says he’ll clear my bounty if I take it.”

“And you trust him?” Seungmin asks, incredulity in every word.

Minho laughs dryly. “Hate to agree with Minnie junior, but he’s right. There’s no guarantee the King will hold up his end.”

“But there’s never a guarantee anyone gets a payout from a bounty. It’s honor code to an extreme. Fae don’t break promises.”

Minho’s mouth thins, disapproving. “Think it through.” 

He’d seen something, then. “They expected to get me, didn’t they?”

“They thought I.N. would make you forget the time limit. I’m not sure if he knows he was a distraction or not, considering he helped you leave.”

“I doubt he’d mind having me back,” Jisung mutters. 

“Sung.” Changbin’s hand spasms where he’s clutching Jisung’s thigh. “That won’t happen.”

“But he did look genuine,” Minho says. “He didn’t know you were hurting.” He peers at Jisung curiously. “I won’t ask.” But he’s open to listening, he doesn’t say.

Minho and Seungmin don’t know anything about Jisung before Hyunjin. Just that he lived with fae, and he hated it. He lived with fae that ended up trying to kill him for deserting, and they almost succeeded. Minho’s the only one out of their little group—Minho, Jisung, Changbin, Seungmin, Hyunjin—besides Jisung himself, who’s actually met Jeongin and Felix. 

It wasn’t a good meeting, considering all the murderous intent.

“Fae lie,” Jisung says anyway. “It’s what they do.”

“Maybe,” Minho says. “But as a fae adjacent species that also lies religiously—” Changbin groans at that, and Jisung snickers—“It really did look genuine.”

Seungmin huffs and looks away.

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Jisung says. “Did the renewal go well?”

“Fine,” Seungmin says. “No problems there. And the mystery guy stayed quiet tonight.”

Changbin nods in agreement. “You had one customer, but she just wanted a trinket. Since I took the memory it’s already in our storage space.”

“Thanks, guys,” Jisung says. Minho smiles back at him, still kind of worried, but stands and presses a kiss to his forehead. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Fall apart, he thinks. 

Minho says his goodbyes since he wants to get started looking into Felix and the Prince, Seungmin mutters something about triple checking wards as he goes too, and Changbin drags Jisung back to bed despite his protests—but they know each other too well, by now, so Changbin yanks Jisung in and shuts him up with his mouth—and Jisung gives and decides that yeah, actually, going back to bed is a great idea.

* * *

He always finds himself back here. 

He shivers and wraps his arms around himself. The graveyard isn’t cold, per se, but there’s a chilling feel to it. He supposes it’s because Death is less present here. 

It’s a bit of an oxymoron, Death being more present among the living than the dead. But Death doesn’t care about the bodies of things—they lurk, instead, among the living, waiting with a countdown, pressing kisses to the foreheads of those on the brink. Easing their rest, guiding their way. 

Death cares about souls, not the puppets those souls control. 

They never really show themself to Jisung anymore, but he knows they’re there. He used to come to graveyards to get away from them, as Death tended to linger at the boundaries rather than enter. That habit never quite went away. 

He first met Death when he was five. He’d just done his first kill, an execution instead of the assassinations that would come, and when he looked up, Death stood there, looking at him. 

Soon enough, they were gone, and all Jisung had was an impression of a tall figure in a dark cloak, with long dark curly hair.

He next met Death when he was ten. He’d had tens of kills since then, and to this day isn’t sure what made that particular one so special. But he darted forward with the knife, slashing the target’s throat, and then the man froze, midfall. 

Everything froze. 

And there stood Death.

“Did I miss?”

Death laughed, pitchy and high. YOU DIDN’T MISS.

“Who are you, then?”

Death slowly bent and scooped into the body. When they stood, they held something blue and shimmering in their hands. I AM DEATH.

Jisung frowned. He supposed that meant… “Am I dead?”

Death curled their fingers inward, dispelling the blue thing (a soul, Jisung later realized) into the void. YOU ARE VERY MUCH ALIVE, CHILD. They stepped forward, cupping Jisung’s face in their hand. Their fingers are cold and bony and press uncomfortably against his jaw. 

“But I can see you.”

YOU CAN SEE ME BECAUSE I LET YOU. BECAUSE I CHOSE YOU.

Jisung opened his mouth to ask more—

But then Death was gone. 

Again. 

He saw Death a few more times after that, enough that in the last days before Hyunjin found him he was used to their presence, used to their lurking and cyclical way of speaking. 

But then he left, and had a few realizations, and, well. Death got a bit sidelined. 

Still, he finds himself back here, in a graveyard he’s sure Death doesn’t even know exists, trying to run from himself. 

Again.

He kicks at the dirt and tries not to feel too pathetic.

* * *

The stranger comes back the next day. 

He can’t say he didn’t expect it—the man had seemed desperate, and he knows who Jisung is, so if he was determined to get the spell from him, specifically, he won’t settle for less.

Jisung tracks him with his gaze as he busies himself around the shop, but he can tell the man isn’t really looking for anything, and nothing is calling to him.

He wants the charm he asked for.

The problem is, he won’t pay what Jisung asks, and Jisung’s always reluctant to compromise on these things. 

Though with these new life developments… 

He shouldn’t cave, but Haven doesn’t often get outsiders, and the man’s fae, and no one else within Jisung’s reach will have what he needs.

His Compass shattered when Felix and Jeongin came after him. If he’s really going after the Prince, he needs to build a new one. (He’s not sure if that’s the right term—they never really had a word for them within the court, given the general fae belief of names holding power. That’s just what he’s always called them.)

“I’m looking for a vessel capable of holding fae magic level 8 or higher, at a volume of two million standard units,” he says. The man balks, and Jisung gets it. It’s a high level, and a high volume. Even those measurements separately, he’d expect fae to balk, much less together. “I know you’re fae, otherwise I wouldn’t ask. I’ll take that instead of memory.”

The man stares at him. Jisung stares right back. “Are you rejoining the court?” he asks.

Jisung snorts.

With the day he had yesterday… he should be more worried. But again, this guy’s looking to hide his “friend”, if his friend isn’t actually himself. He’s no ally of the court right now. If he was, he’d go to them for this, and Jisung would already be dead where he stands. 

“No,” he says. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

“Right,” the man says, abashed. “Sorry.” He looks to the side, exhales slowly through his nose. “I have a magically shaped perfect sphere of uncut black opal. 950 carats, radius 18 mm.” 

Well, shit. That works.

“I’ll give it to you when you deliver the spell.”

“And how do I know you have it?”

“It’s a deal, isn’t it? You hold up your end, I hold up mine.”

Jisung considers him.

Well, the spell shouldn’t actually take that much out of him.

“Alright,” he settles on. “It’ll be ready within a week.”

“A—” the man shakes his head. “You can’t work faster?”

“I have shit to do,” Jisung says, like he wasn’t sitting at the register picking his nails before the man came in.

“I need it soon,” the man says. _“Please.”_

“I don’t really care,” Jisung says.

“You’re after the Prince, right?” The man says, desperation leaking into his tone. “I have information—”

“I’m not, actually,” Jisung says, smiling blandly. Not exactly a lie, since he still hasn’t actually for sure decided, but not the truth either. “I’m not hunting anymore.”

“But the opal—”

“Research.”

“What will you take to have it ready by the end of today?”

Jisung’s eyebrows shoot up. Wow, he wants it, like, _now._ And he knows Jisung can do it, too—just the way he’s tensing his jaw stubbornly gives that away. 

At this point it’s just the principal of the thing that makes Jisung say, “I want a memory.”

The man groans, exasperated, and Jisung can almost see the cogs turning in his brain. “Under the condition that you don’t watch it,” he says, finally. “I don’t want you to watch it.”

It’s just a power source, anyway. And, again, he’ll have the opal. It’s the principle of the thing. “I won’t,” Jisung says. There’ll be more that goes into it—when he gives over the memory later that day, he’ll probably want to lock it, but for now… 

“Earring, necklace, or ring?”

* * *

“You’re really thinking about it, huh,” Minho says, later, watching him pace. Jisung had just finished recounting the event. Minho and Changbin had stopped by to drop off lunch for him because according to Minho he was quote giving off frantic energy unquote, and Jisung had subsequently flipped the sign to closed and dragged them into the back, where he’s waiting for his pot of assorted magic to boil. “Hunting the Prince.”

“Yeah,” Jisung says, not bothering to deny it. “Even if— _if_ —the King lied and they don’t leave me alone, twenty billion units is… Fuck, what do you even do with that kind of power?”

“Hide,” Minho says, amused. “If you’re you.”

“Are you sure of the, like, ethics of killing the guy?” Changbin asks.

That’s… that’s a good point.

“Court ruled him guilty, obviously, but the court can be trusted for fuck all.” Jisung sighs, runs a hand down his face. “And I wouldn’t be killing him, I’d be subduing him. Maybe I can do a little recon, see what’s up with him. Or why the King can’t bring him in himself.” 

Minho clears his throat. “A little recon might be a lot of effort.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

Jisung scrunches his nose. Needle in haystack. Maybe… “Focus on Australia?”

“Australia?” Changbin asks, frowning. “Why Australia?”

“Hyunjin detected abnormal fae activity near Australia a few weeks ago. I poked into it but ultimately found nothing. Maybe this is related.”

“That’s possible,” Minho says. “I’ll check it out.”

He heads out, and Changbin watches Jisung for a few more minutes before he says, “I feel a little useless.”

“You’re not.”

“I feel like it.” 

Jisung lowers the heat and tips a bag of oak ashes into the pot. “It’s fae bullshit. I’d be more worried if you were intensely involved.”

Changbin hums. 

Jisung works in the quiet that follows, shuffling around bottles and searching for the little piece of obsidian he has leftover from some other spell he’d sold. It’s easy to fit it into an earring, just a matter of molding it to fit into a metal post. He shapes it into a tiny hoop because a stud is too small, and he doubts a dangling earring is particularly practical for whatever the person is doing. 

“He’s coming back in five,” Jisung says, glancing at Changbin. “You can stay back here if you want…?”

“Alright.”

He exits the back and, as promised, the stranger enters in five minutes. He has the same tag as he has had, which is good, because at least his intentions haven’t changed… 

“One earring,” Jisung says, holding it out. “Opal please?”

The stranger moves his hand in a way that Jisung recognizes as accessing a pocket dimension, and pulls back with a stone. Black, shot through with red and orange and green and blue like fire. Perfect sphere, as promised. No tags on it that say someone’s tracking it. It seems legit. Holds the right level of magic, and is legitimately a black opal. 

They exchange the stones, and then the stranger holds out a little piece of glass. It resonates with energy, enough that Jisung can tell it’s legitimate. “The memory. I locked it. I’d appreciate it if you don’t go digging.”

“No promises.”

Exchange complete, the stranger walks out of the store, only hesitating a little at his words, and Jisung turns to the opal. The memory can wait.

Bounty hunting slash assassinating sometimes requires the ability to quickly draw magic, or use the kind of spell that takes a while to initialize—so most hunters use a “Compass”—a physical object that holds ready-to-use magic. There are lots of other functions, of course, but the main two are magical storage, and direction. A Compass should take a name and guide the assassin in the direction of the target. 

To make a court-approved Compass, he needs a court councilmember, a court-approved smith, and to be using court-approved materials. 

To make a Compass, he needs himself, his magic, and an appropriate vessel. Black opal isn’t on the list of court-approved materials, but it functions better than anything else they suggest. He’d be limited with anything else, anyway, just by his power output. He supposes that was the point. 

Changbin watches him curiously as he sets the opal down with a thunk. “What’re you doing?”

“Transmuting.” He pauses. “Do you want to help?”

“What can I do?”

Jisung directs him to hold the thing, push energy into it. It’ll help Jisung’s connection to it if Changbin’s already there. Then he has Changbin do the things he doesn’t need to do himself—chalk sketches on the floor, some magic deposits—he doesn’t usually like working with people, regardless of whether he likes the person themselves, because it disturbs his flow and concentration, but he’s pretty sure Changbin’s grateful to have something to do. And Jisung can stand to be a little disoriented to give Changbin a bit of contentment. 

He finishes the last sigil, and closes his eyes. “This might take a while.”

“I’ll be here.”

And then colors burst behind his eyes, the same colors as in the opal, and he falls back into his own mind. 

Compasses tend to be objects, Jisung knows. But they can also be sentient, where the word sentient implies a level of sentience observable to humans. He’s seen a lynx Compass, before. He’s not entirely sure what happened to it. 

The tricky thing about bonding with a Compass is that even without sentience, he needs the opal’s permission. 

All things have self-awareness on some level—a rock knows it’s a rock, otherwise it won’t _be_ a rock, in accordance to magical laws of existence—but those things don’t typically have complex enough thought for the question of permission to even register. With the lynx, it might’ve merely taken a translation spell for it to understand the request, especially given the animal’s magical properties. With the opal, Jisung needs a ritual. As far as he knows there’s never been a humanoid/being of human or above intelligence level Compass, though it’s probably possible, under the right circumstances. It’d be tedious, though. Dragging another person around with you on missions. 

Regardless. 

“Hey,” he says, crouching on the ground to pat the opal. It’s propped up in the sand. “You’re a long way from home, yeah?”

Nothing. Not that Jisung really expected it. The ritual doesn’t give the opal the ability to talk, just to understand. 

“Bet this doesn’t look too familiar. The water.”

Jisung’s mind used to present itself as his and Felix’s room when they were living with the court. It’s the only stability he’d ever known, at that point. Even traveling with Hyunjin, he didn’t latch on to any of the many places they’d stopped. He refused to meditate or work on his magic because of it (and the fear, but that’s not relevant here). His performance declined. 

That’s where the heart eyes come in. 

The land wasn’t settled by him and Changbin, as much as he’d like to claim. Despite that, Minho’s joked about it being their baby, which without fail dusts pink on Jisung’s cheeks and results in a mock-fight on the floor of the kitchen. But the town was mostly abandoned, a population of half human, half cowering non-humans. At the outskirts lay a hunter’s lodge. They hunted the fae in the town for sport until they all but ran them out. 

Perfect for Jisung. Less so for Hyunjin, or Minho, or Seungmin, or any of the mer Changbin had with him. 

They saved Haven, as much as Changbin tries to humbly deny it. And in doing so, they grew closer, until he felt he carved a place there for himself. Even then, he saw his old room. It wasn’t until he and Changbin moved in together that his mind became something new. 

Haven, as they found it. The beaches, the eight fully standing buildings… 

“If I were alone I wouldn’t be here,” Jisung tells the opal. “I would just keep running. I can evade them for long enough—I _have_ evaded them for long enough—but I’m not alone. I can’t let Minho or Seungmin or—I can’t let any of them take the fall for the monster I used to be. If the court catches up to me and finds them…” He sighs. “I don’t pretend to be a saint. I know who I am, I know that if there is a heaven there’s not much I can do to redeem myself in celestial eyes. But I need to make sure Changbin is safe.”

He lets himself sink in the silence, sitting down next to it in the sand, watching the water crash on loop. 

And it opens. No fanfare, no words. He can hear it calling. 

“Thank you,” he tells it quietly. He reaches out and taps it with a finger, opens the bond. “I appreciate it.”

He resurfaces to Changbin snoring and smiles, fondly, over at where he’s slumped in a chair. It’s not too late yet, so he’ll poke at the memory shard before dragging him to bed. 

The memory is locked, but Jisung is nothing if not a crafty motherfucker, so he pries at it for a bit. Poking at the lock to find its weak points. And the stranger did a good job—but Jisung is Jisung, and he gets it open in no time. 

The memory itself is less a memory and more impressions. When he dives into it he can see… 

_Blond. Smile… dimples. Giggling._

_Love._

It’s a person. It’s a complete sum of the stranger’s impressions of a person. 

That’s a strange thing to give as payment. It gives Jisung a lot of information about him, and he had to have known that Jisung could break the lock. 

But maybe he wants him to know.

* * *

Minho contacts him the next day with a location. 

The other three mobilize before he even gets out of bed, despite Seungmin and Minho still not being on speaking terms. He’s honestly impressed. Changbin’s probably been acting as “translator”, given the tired eyes and immediate beeline for Jisung once he appears in the doorway. 

“You don’t have to come,” Jisung repeats for maybe the fifth time. He can take the search from here on his own, probably.

Minho smacks him upside the head. “Shut up, Sungie.”

Alright then. 

Minho’s narrowed the search down to a certain part of Australia, but he’ll need to walk around a bit while physically present to completely pinpoint. 

They take the opportunity to get ice cream, because it’s hot and the ice cream place in Haven only has two flavors. It goes fine except for one moment when Seungmin passes Minho some napkins and Minho doesn’t take them, just stands and stares at Seungmin’s face, but they hurriedly put a stop to that potential fight by physically stepping between them. 

And soon enough, Minho’s herding them in a specific direction. “We’ll need to go invisible,” he says, casual like he’d talking about something mundane. “The place is a crime scene. We might be too late.”

Jisung frowns. He’d have heard from the court, by now, if they were. They wouldn’t hesitate to rub it in his face.

But true to Minho’s word, the house is fenced off with caution tape. It’s not swarming with police, which is good news for them, but it’s still being stared at by passersby. 

“We’ll stay here,” Changbin says, pulling Seungmin back from where he’d been bristling at Minho, “You two go in.”

Jisung nods. Four people is too bulky, anyway. He’d prefer to go in on his own but he supposes if he’s taking anyone, the one of them that can dissolve into smoke is the ideal choice. And, technically, Minho’s the one actually tracking the Prince… 

Inside, the place is trashed. Papers everywhere, smashed furniture—there’s brown stains on the wall that might’ve been blood before the law enforcement cleaned the place up. 

“I lost it,” Minho says after a moment, scrunching his face up as if that’ll help with his concentration. “My trace on him. It’s just… gone. Somehow.”

The rest of the house is in a similar state. Whoever lived here put up a struggle. If he concentrates, he can hear echos of conflict, strangely disjointed—some of it between a woman and a man, some of it between the same woman and a group of indistinct voices. Likely fae who’ve protected themselves against detection. 

Jisung crouches down in one of the upstairs rooms, glass crunching under his boots, and picks up a flimsy piece of paper with a twist of his fingers.

It’s a picture. Tattered, but still intact enough for him to see a woman with a man who might be her son, who looks vaguely familiar, dimples, big smile, blonde hair—

Oh.

“I know how,” Jisung says, folding the picture with a gesture and sliding it into his pocket.

The nervousness makes sense now. _Are you rejoining the court? You’re after the Prince, right?_

“The stranger,” Jisung says, refocusing on Minho. “The one who wanted the spell but wouldn’t pay with a memory until the end. He was rushed, remember? I saw the memory. The Prince was in it.”

Minho exhales in a big whoosh. “You hid him from yourself, then. Effectively.”

Effectively, yes. Theoretically he should be able to track his own magic, but the Prince or the stranger will have realized that, no? They won’t make it _that_ easy. (And now he knows that the stranger isn’t the Prince, as long as the blond man is. Because the memory payment wouldn’t have worked with impressions of himself.) 

“Can you trace it?”

Jisung grimaces. “Uh…”

Minho deflates. “Damn.”

“We should regroup.”

He nods and the two of them slip back out, grazing by Changbin and Seungmin so they know to follow.

Once they reach a secluded enough spot, they unveil themselves. 

“Anything?”

“No.”

Jisung runs a hand down his face, thinking, as Minho explains what they’d discovered. 

Changbin nudges him and takes his hand in his own so he stops tugging at his hair. “Sungie?” He asks, quiet enough Minho and Seungmin don’t hear. 

Jisung looks at him, then down at their hands. “I…”

“If you’d been faster,” Seungmin’s snapping, and Minho bristles right back. Changbin exhales loudly and shoves himself between them, raising his voice as they raise theirs, leaving Jisung to stare at his hand, which is still up from where Changbin had ripped away. 

I’LL BE HERE.

But that’s what Jisung’s afraid of.

WHENEVER YOU NEED ME.

“Like you’ve been any help!” Minho snarls.

Jisung scoffs to himself. None of them are being any help, right now.

So.

He closes his eyes. 

_Wherever it points._

He doesn’t connect with his magic often, because he knows the ramifications of what he is. 

Jisung is seeped in Death magic. He drips it, it saturates the air around him. When he gets far enough into it, he opens his eyes and is faced with the echoes of every single person he’s killed.

(He’s killed a lot of people.)

He casts the die.

They come up null.

(He knows Death as intimately as a lover but that’s not it at all. Death comes to him. He has no choice. Death stands by his side and waits for a command and Jisung—he shuts it off. He disconnects, puts himself at a fraction of his true power, because he hates the reminder of what he used to be. He hates that he’s still so seeped in death that he can’t escape Him, even now.)

“Seoul,” Jisung says loudly, still deep in it. The other three startle out of their argument. He’s getting flashes, he thinks. He can see a smile, hear a laugh—someone familiar.

YOU CAN’T RUN FROM ME FOREVER.

Jisung inhales harshly. The visions cease, just for a moment. Fingers brush over his cheek, cold as ice. 

I’LL BE HERE. WHETHER YOU EVER GIFT TO ME AGAIN, OR NOT.

_Never._

YOU’RE MY CHOSEN, HAN JISUNG. Death presses a kiss to his forehead. It is, like their hands, too cold. Their breath rattles. I’LL DO WHATEVER YOU NEED, EVEN IF WHAT YOU NEED IS FOR ME TO CRUMBLE TO DUST.

Jisung doesn’t answer. Death sighs, and then they’re gone.

And Jisung can see the Prince again.

Papers. He’s signing… 

Ah, the Prince is working at a cafe.

Cute.

 _Toast,_ it’s called. Hongdae…? 

“I have him,” Jisung says. He lingers for a moment more, because it feels important, because his magic is drawn to the cafe, but nothing happens and they should hurry. He’s a little shaken by Death, as well, anxious to get moving again. 

“We made this trip for nothing,” Minho says, humorously. He and Seungmin are back to ignoring each other, it seems. 

His ink spreads and blankets them once more and he walks them to Seoul.

* * *

“Iced Americano,” Minho says. “And a honey brick toast.” 

The man across the counter wears a tag that says “Chan”. Jisung, from where he’s watching in a scry bowl, is ninety-nine percent sure that it’s him. “Will that be all?” Chan asks. He doesn’t even notice. Twenty goddamn billion for a man who can’t sense he’s being watched. 

“Yeah, thanks,” Minho says, and fumbles for his wallet to pay. 

This is maybe not the best reconnaissance plan they’ve come up with, but. Well. They don’t have much to work with. It’s better than Jisung attempting it, as the stranger might’ve warned the Prince—Chan—about him, and of the other three, Minho’s best able to protect himself.

Chan is, they’d all agreed, disgustingly normal. 

From what Minho found, Bang Chan, if that’s actually his real Name, was raised by a single mom in Sydney, Australia. No weird shit at any point in his timeline—Minho had quadruple checked. He has all his school and medical records in order, no tampering—he even has swim and football medals on his childhood bedroom wall—they’re all real. Again, Minho checked. He moved to Seoul at the beginning of the year to get involved in the Korean music scene but his career hasn’t really taken off so he’s been working at Toast to make up for it.

And he seems, again, in short, achingly normal.

He barely even feels like magic. If Jisung didn’t have that picture, or if he couldn’t see the blatant glint of the obsidian earring in the man’s ear, he’d second guess himself.

“I love your earring,” Minho says as Chan prints his receipt, clearly (to Jisung and Seungmin, at least, who makes a noise of disgust and actually gets up to walk away) laying it on thick. “The black one. It’s beautiful.”

“Thanks,” Chan says, grinning shyly and touching it self consciously. “My friend gave it to me, sorry, I would’ve told you where he got it from if I knew…”

“Oh, no worries!” Minho says. He takes the receipt Chan hands him. “Have a good day!”

He sits in the cafe for a bit, and Jisung abandons watching him after several boring hours of experimental equations. Minho comes back late that night.

Rinse and repeat.

“Did you move here recently?” Chan asks, one day. Jisung perks up from where he’d been slumped.

“Transferred universities this year,” Minho says. “Yonsei’s dorms are right around the corner.” They’d actually initially thought Chan had moved for college, before they figured out there was no record of him in any university database. It’s interesting, though. Whatever struggle caused that destruction at his house in Australia, Chan wasn’t a part of it. Time was loose, in the house, and while he and his mom did have a fight about him leaving (was she trying to get him to stay or go?) that wasn’t what trashed the place. 

“Have you always lived here?” Minho asks. “Your accent is, uh…” 

“I came here at the beginning of the year. I’m from Australia. _Australia!_ ” He does a little hand sign, too, waving his pinky and thumb and grinning.

Oh, that’s cute.

“Your Korean’s good.”

“Thanks. I spoke it with my mom a lot, growing up.”

They have to cut the conversation short, as Minho still hasn’t given his order and someone’s entered the cafe behind him. 

Meanwhile, Seungmin’s stopped watching Minho entirely. Jisung sees the green eyed monster in his peripheral, sometimes.

It’s getting concerning.

“I’ve decided,” Minho says, after, dropping down into a seat at the table. “He barely has any magic, and he didn’t react when I poked at him with mine. There’s no way he’s done anything but hide.”

Jisung groans. “Does he even know who he is.” It’s not a question. He doesn’t doubt the answer. 

Minho shakes his head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

Shit.

So it would probably be morally bad to go after him, but he’s going to get caught eventually. Even Jisung’s magic has its limits. If Jisung brought him in as opposed to, say, Jeongin… it doesn’t mean much, does it. It means Jisung gets to walk free, but is that a net good if he’s just going to go back to hiding in Haven?

No.

“Fuck,” Jisung mumbles, slumping further in his seat. Chan had been happy, in the impressions Jisung was given. The pure kind of happiness, just truly joyful.

He wishes he could stay that way.

“He has that stranger looking out for him,” Jisung says quietly, when no one else moves to speak. “He’ll be fine. We should go back to Haven.”

“Jisung—”

“I know what the court will do to him. If he really doesn’t know anything, I’m not going to be the one to subject him to that.” 

YOU COULD HELP.

Death’s voice reverberates through his skull, leaving his teeth grinding hard enough he winces. 

He could help. But at what cost? He refuses to lose himself again.

He can’t.

Even if it means potentially dooming Chan to the fate the court will hand him.

“If Jisung wants to leave, I’ll follow,” Seungmin says. He isn’t looking at Minho, but they all know that’s where his attention lies.

“I’ll need to say a goodbye to Chan,” Minho says, reluctant. “We talk too regularly… But me, too.”

“You already know I’m with you,” Changbin says.

And so it’s decided.

They don’t need time to pack up. It’s easy to magically deconstruct what corner they’d carved for themselves in that apartment complex, easier still to shove anything they’d brought over back to their homes in Haven. They sleep there one more night, and then they rise in the morning so Minho can go say goodbye.

Seungmin mutters something about it not being necessary, but Minho’s gone out for lunch with him a few times at this point, it’s definitely a friendship (false pretences or not), and they’re not going to actively cause more anguish to the man by ripping that away from him without so much as a word. 

That doesn’t end up being the problem. The problem doesn’t stem from Minho wanting to tie up loose ends. 

The problem comes from Jisung being there when he does.

* * *

Toast is empty when Minho arrives. He waves to Chan, and Jisung, who’s standing outside with Changbin and Seungmin, isn’t expecting much fanfare.

Then there’s a glint of light and the sharp sound of a sword being drawn—Jisung feels like he’s in a video game—and he only barely has the sense to shove the other two down and jump back when one of said swords comes down where he was just standing.

Heavy force on his chest pushes him to dematerialize and phase through the wall, and when he comes out the other end, so does his assailant. 

“Oh my god!” Chan yelps, diving for cover, some nasty spell veering past Jisung and impacting where he’d been standing. “What are you DOING?”

The assailant—the stranger—does a gesture and sends Minho out with the other two before he can even react. 

“I know what this looks like,” Jisung says, as calmly as he can when his breathing is ragged and he’s fitting his rib back from where it’d rematerialized weirdly. “I can explain.”

The stranger isn’t open to negotiation, it seems, opting to blast him with something that _looks_ like raw magic, but it’s definitely not. He wants to appear more powerful than he is, then. He’s compensating. Jisung barely has to form a shield to defend himself.

He takes a closer look.

There’s some kind of suppressant on the stranger’s magic—though it doesn’t look like he has much of a pool to begin with. He has a functioning Compass, though. And Jisung’s almost surprised by that.

The stranger takes the opportunity to slip away, using a dimension shift from said Compass, but Jisung follows him and twists so he’s in front, spreads his whole self out _wide—_ and he can, here, because the stranger chose the wrong plane to challenge him on—the celestial/astral plane is likely only second to any magical planes in terms of his power level. So he spreads and surrounds and locks the stranger’s pebble down, a veritable lightshow, glittering and sweeping in the darkness, wing-like appendages folding in, but the speck wriggles out and flickers and runs back to physical. 

“Fuck, you’re terrifying,” the stranger gasps, twisting a hand to bring out a knife that he tries to slam into Jisung’s shoulder but he stops him, twists his wrist to get him to drop it, and shoves him into the wall, back-first. 

“Why did you ask me for the spell if you know who I am?” 

The stranger writhes, but Jisung doesn’t let up. He lashes out, wraps a piece of premade magic around Chan’s wrist in the shape of chains and cuffs, and drags him out from behind the counter. “Stop!” The stranger shrieks. 

Now even if Chan wanted to—and Jisung’s going to assume he doesn’t, considering he’s still here—he can’t leave until Jisung lets him. He almost feels bad, seeing him cower. “You clearly care for him—tell me, and I’ll take the cuff off.”

“I didn’t think you were with the court anymore,” the stranger gasps. “I didn’t think you’d take any more hunts until you asked for the vessel. You’re one of the most powerful magic users in the world, and the only one of them even slightly fae inclined, I thought with your magic we could fly under the radar.”

Jisung’s grip tightens. “And you’re, what, a self appointed guard?”

“I was assigned to bring him in,” the stranger says. “But to do that I got to know him, and it was my first time spending an extended period of time in the human realm, and I realized that… that the court does a lot of things wrong. That _I_ did… I did a lot of fucked up things, too.”

Jisung snorts. “So that’s a yes. What the hell was that memory, then? You fell? Decided the court could go fuck itself in the face of true love?”

“Please let him go,” Chan says, quietly, and Jisung startles, having honestly forgotten he was here despite just cuffing him. “Please. I still don’t know much about what’s going on but… he’s only helped me. If you really want to take me in… don’t hurt him. You can take me, I’ll go.”

“Chan—”

“You’ve done so much for me, Lix, let me—”

Jisung sucks in a breath harshly. There’s a recollection prevention spell on the stranger’s—or not-so-much-a-stranger’s—face and magic, but he _knows_ him and the shock of the name gives him enough to actively, consciously realize that he does.

It’s already giving him a headache, but it’s just magic. 

And Jisung’s good at magic.

He rips it off.

Felix yelps, and he doesn’t struggle away anymore, instead plows through the fear—and it _is_ fear, rightful fear because Jisung is going to _fucking kill him—_ yanks Jisung close enough to hiss— _“Han Peter Jisung.”_

Jisung slumps, strings cut. He half expects—he doesn’t know what he expects. But Felix doesn’t touch him, doesn’t look at him—he runs over to Chan, rips off the now-defunct cuff, and then they’re gone.

And then it’s just him.

He’s lying on the floor of a damn cafe, waiting to regain agency, now cursed with the knowledge that Felix defied the court for Chan after a month at most of knowing him, when he spent decades obeying their orders to hurt Jisung without even a doubt.

* * *

When Jisung was—he doesn’t know. Age doesn’t matter much, to fae. When he was young—one, maybe—his parents sold him to the fae for success and financial stability. 

In some abstract way, Jisung supposes he can understand. They were young, and hadn’t planned on having him, and they could barely get by on their own, much less with a baby. Still.

He doesn’t know if that's really forgivable. And of course, they weren’t that careful, and they left loopholes—they fell apart in other ways. They hurt each other. They tore each other to pieces for the wealth lust sacrifice they’d forced on him.

But they’re in his past, now. 

All he had was a watch. His father’s watch, given to him as a stipulation to the exchange. 

Lucky for him, the plastic face and pot-metal alloy held enough potential to act as his Compass for a long while.

Felix took that from him, too. Jealousy can be ugly.

He supposes he should thank him, anyway—leaving the watch and therefore any connection to his parents behind was good for him. Freeing.

They’re long dead, anyway.

The court was never kind to him—the court is never kind to anyone—but it was his home. He grew up among the lying deceitful councilmembers, learned from their tutors, fought with his “classmates”. 

Felix and Jeongin, though. They were his friends. His best friends. They hurt him, but they didn’t know better, and they loved him, but they tore him apart in the end. Hate isn’t a strong enough word, but neither is love.

So he lays on the ground, melting, breathing so lightly he’s barely breathing at all, becoming undone.

He unravels.

At least Felix was scared. That means he knows—oh, he _knows_ —how much Jisung wants him gutted. Jisung is death as much as Death is a person, and death is a relentless force on a good day. 

YOU’RE ANGRY. 

“Of course I’m angry.”

TALKING TO ME AGAIN, I SEE. 

Jisung stews in the self-loathing of finally breaking. He opens his eyes.

Death looks the same—of course they do. Black on black clothes and hands shoved into the black hoodie. Black hair, artfully tousled to frame their face. Black lettering on their hands.

White eyes. Dead eyes. 

IT WAS ALWAYS GOING TO HAPPEN. They pet Jisung’s hair, and his scalp tingles to life. Lightning from the top of his head to his fingertips to his toes, negating the numbing effects of the Naming. 

“Doesn’t mean you have to be smug.”

I’M NOT SMUG.

Jisung huffs. 

Outside, Changbin is frantic. He’s not sure about Minho and Seungmin but he assumes they’re in a similar state. 

“What do you think?” Jisung asks. Death helps him up to a seated position. Jisung doesn’t trust his legs to have recovered enough to stand. 

I SAW THAT COMING, Death says. DIDN’T YOU?

Jisung growls, slams a fist into the ground. “You’re friends with Time, you cheat.”

I DON'T CHEAT. He's telling the truth. Death doesn't cheat. Death is painfully, fatally honest. YOUR OLD FRIEND HAS FALLEN FOR A HUMAN DESPITE WHAT HE USED TO CLAIM ABOUT THEM. They sit across from him. ABOUT YOU.

 _“Half_ human.”

THE FAE DON’T CARE.

He knows.

It’s very black and white. The court teaches humans in a certain light—and they’re like a plague, to them, infecting everything they touch—half human is human, quarter human is human… 

Maybe Felix _did_ learn to correct his mindset, with Chan. 

Jisung’s teeth are going to be ground to dust, at this rate. “I want to know what the hell Felix is doing. And I know he can’t stand up to any of the people who’ll chase after Chan’s bounty.”

OH, JISUNG, Death says solemnly, reverently. Knowing. BE CAREFUL. 

Because out of everyone, Death knows Jisung like Jisung knows death. So he grins.

“Always am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for making felix (and jeongin) kind of shitty :((( i love them i promise theyll be better
> 
> i didnt name the things compasses until after i named the fic lolllll they were called carriers but then i was like hm nah thats a bit weird. compass is also weird. idk. im j going where the theme takes me
> 
> time to overshare lol  
> i moved back to campus yesterday! and i tested negative whoop whoop  
> its kinda sad tho i dont have bedding until a week in cos of reasons and i miss my dog and i just want to hug my best friend but nope shes too far away :((((((((( also im tired as fuck bc it took literally all day yesterday and i didnt let myself sleep in bc im trying to actually have a functional circadian rhythm but hnnnnnnnng anyway. goodnight <3


	3. 1.3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which some conflict resolves and some conflict begins. (jisung, jeongin, and felix get into a fight. chan's dragged along for the ride.)
> 
> [wanted.  
> han: 5b alive/1b dead.  
> the Prince: 20b alive/1m dead.  
> felix: 7b alive/1b dead.  
> hyunjin: 1m alive/0 dead.]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh boy this shit do be heavy im so sorry
> 
> idt i put it in the beginning notes but even if i did id like to reiterate that this fic doesn't reflect how they are as people nor does it reflect my view of them as people, it's a fictionalized alternate depiction of their public personas which likely is not how they actually are. again, this is fiction--please don't take any of this as reality
> 
> i use warlock in maybe a slightly different way than the general understanding 
> 
> (cw: ok so. its been present before but there’s very heavy **past discrimination based on species**? and im basing some of jisung’s thought process along the lines of mine in a situation i wont go into detail on, but its Not necessarily the Right way to view the whole situation and it’s definitely not the Only way, so please don’t take it as me saying that. 
> 
> i do specifically bring up something that after writing it i realized might be triggering for anyone who’s faced **discrimination getting medical care,** but i wasn’t sure how exactly to take that out and keep a specific interaction, so it’s in there, and if you want to skip it it starts at “Felix was good at healing” and ends about three paragraphs down “Maybe Felix can see it in his face”. 
> 
> **more violence and fighting** yay! lmao.  
>  **minor bone breaking description. past bullying, somewhat explicit childhood physical bullying/abuse** , if you want to skip the explicit bullying bit it's in parenthesis after --RUN--)

“Are you sure?”

Of course he’s not sure. But this seems like the most logical course of action to take. He’s not stupid enough to believe that the enemy of his enemy is his friend, but the wound is fresh for Jeongin. 

Jisung just needs to dig his grubby little paws into the opening. Agitate it.

Minho regards him, still. Looks at him like he knows what he’s thinking, but no one except Death really knows what he’s thinking. “I saw him fight you,” he reminds him. “He hates you just as much.”

“Trust me,” Jisung says. “A hundred or so years with someone, you know where to hit to hurt. I can redirect his focus.”

“That’s a two way street.”

“Not with me.” Jisung grins, sharp and guarded. “Jeongin knows nothing about me. Nothing that matters, anyway.”

“Nothing about Changbin, you mean.”

Jisung snaps the incense stick a little too aggressively. “Yeah.”

Minho hums.

They’re back in their temporary apartment, and Changbin and Seungmin went back to Haven, because Jisung didn’t want Changbin anywhere near Jeongin. Changbin, having heard Jisung talk about him and Felix, understands why. He trusts Jisung to handle himself.

Jisung won’t let him down.

Their summoning circle is far from neat. His side aches but he doesn’t care. Death creeps into his next exhale, and he can feel their embrace. Security. Ensurance. Death can’t themself intervene but they can give Jisung tools to survive.

Jeongin appears in the circle with a swirl of reddish smoke. He raises an eyebrow at Jisung, at the lack of a containment ring or rune, and steps out.

“I found Felix,” Jisung says, three words like a hammer, slamming the point home. 

“Where?” He’s curious, just a little angry. That’s good. No overt aggression yet. 

“He abandoned you for a lover,” Jisung says. Jeongin’s ears go red and Jisung smiles. “Were you negligent? Or did he just find someone better?”

Jeongin snarls, takes a step forward, but Minho’s conjuring a wall before he even raises a claw. 

“Hurts, huh?” Jisung ignores Minho’s glaring. He has a handle on it. “Maybe he didn’t leave you a note to spare your feelings.”

“I feel so spared,” Jeongin spits. “Did you summon me to taunt me?”

“If I help you find Felix, you don’t take the Prince bounty, and you don’t help anyone who wants to take the Prince bounty.”

Jeongin regards him. “And if I don’t agree?”

“Then I don’t tell you.” Jisung shrugs. “Felix fell for his target. That’s why his price is high.”

“Your terms are acceptable.”

Minho snorts. “Quick turnaround.”

“Felix was after his target for a month,” Jeongin says, studiously pretending not to notice the derision. “Anyone who seriously thinks they can fall in love like that needs a wakeup call.”

“Felix was assigned to bring back the Prince,” Jisung says, interrupting whatever Minho was going to respond with. Jeongin makes some kind of noise in the back of his throat. “He tried to gain his trust by getting to know him and ended up deciding that the court was wrong about him. He deserted to guard him. I may have left you to fix myself, but at least I didn’t do it for someone I’d known for a month.” Technically, he’d known Hyunjin for two. Not that it matters.

“Why are you telling me this?” Jeongin’s tail flicks a little. His ears are swiveled forward. 

“He changed himself for Chan,” Jisung says. He pushes the bitterness into his voice, slathers it all over like cream on a cake. “He didn’t even second guess what he was doing to me.”

Jeongin nods curtly, almost says something and then looks at Minho and decides against it. “Do you have anything else?”

“Not at the moment. He Named me before I could get more out of him.”

Jeongin whistles. “That desperate?”

“Apparently.”

* * *

Jeongin is distantly related to some gumiho. That’s where he gets the fox features, despite not being really a fox. Or really a gumiho, for that matter.

When Jisung met him, he was fascinated by his tail and wanted to touch it, like, all the time. Jeongin didn’t really like touch, but he liked Jisung, so he let him pet it a few times. One memorable day, a really bad day, Jeongin noticed how upset he was and climbed into his bed to cuddle, and laid his tail over Jisung’s hip. He didn’t protest when Jisung latched onto it, even though he probably accidentally yanked it once or twice once he fell asleep.

All this to say, when he settled in Haven, Jisung wanted to adopt a fox like most people adopt dogs, and was unilaterally disappointed when he found out about human laws and exotic pet mandates.

Not that it stops most magic users. 

So Jeongin crouches to draw more lines around their scry bowl in yet another attempt to locate Felix, Minho watching him like a hawk, and Jisung isn’t even bothering to pretend he isn’t glued to the way Jeongin’s tail twitches minutely where it rests bent on the floor.

Minho has cats, who all scratch Jisung’s itch for fur babies, but it’s really not the same. 

It twitches again. “Stop that,” Jeongin grumbles, determinedly not looking back. “You’re not gonna touch it.”

Jisung startles, having thought he was being subtle. 

Oh well. Minho’s fine watching him alone, so Jisung leaves them with a very hesitant goodbye and briefly excuses himself back to Haven.

“He’s fine,” he assures Seungmin for the thousandth time, staring holes into the side of the building, practically vibrating. 

“But—”

“Seungmin,” Jisung interrupts. “I would tell you if he wasn’t fine.”

“Not if he asked you not to,” Seungmin mumbles. 

Jisung sighs. “If he asked me not to and he was in serious danger I would tell you anyway.”

Seungmin frowns at him, but eventually nods. 

“Okay. I’m gonna go say hi to Binnie now,” Jisung says. “Remember, he’s fine.”

The worry’s a good thing, he thinks, pushing open the door to his store. When Minho gets back… 

Hopefully it’ll push them to talk?

Probably not. But one can dream. 

“Hyung?” Jisung calls, climbing the stairs and locking the door with a wave. “Hyung?” He peeks into the bedroom. 

Changbin’s burritoed in the blankets, squinting dubiously at the doorway. “How many times do we have to have the hyung talk?”

“Technically if we translate ages—”

“Do you say a dog is seven if it’s really one?”

“I think it’s fifteen, actually—”

“You’re older than me.”

“On a technicality.”

“It’s not a technicality—”

“Do you want me to stop?”

Changbin pouts. “No.”

“Okay,” Jisung says smugly.  _ “Hyung.”  _ He sits down on the bed, having made his way over as they bickered. 

Changbin makes a displeased noise when the dip causes him to tilt. “Are you done?”

“No. Minho’s still watching him.”

“Ah.” He wrests an arm out to pull Jisung down next to him. 

“I’m in my outside clothes!”

“So change.”

Jisung groans. “I have to go back soon, though.”

Changbin sits up. “How much longer?”

“I don’t…”

“Everything about this—ever since I met you, even, you’ve been…” He struggles to find a word for it. “On edge, I guess. I’m not trying to rush you, but resolving this will… it might help you deal with… everything.”

“I know.” Jisung shakes his head. “I wish it was just point and shoot.” But it’s not, and they both know it. Taking Felix out of the picture leaves Chan more vulnerable, and if Jisung wants to keep him safe he’ll have to hide him. The spell in his earring will only do so much, but Jisung can do more now that he can do magic directly on him. He can layer protections on thick and Chan can go back to whatever mundane life he’d had before Felix was sent to find him. 

Assuming he wants to.

Jisung stays with Changbin until he falls asleep, tracing constellations on his chest, and then stands, quietly. He kisses Changbin’s forehead and traces the medium-distance transport sigil, and sets his mind on Seoul.

* * *

Minho has to leave by the time Jisung gets back, something about a long standing appointment. He doesn’t go into detail.

Which leaves Jisung and Jeongin. 

Alone. 

Jisung knows he could call up Changbin or Seungmin, but again, he’d prefer Jeongin (and by extension the court) not have any leverage on him (or Minho). Still, he holes up in the far corner of the place. 

There’s a clank, interrupting his concentration. He wonders if Minho’s back early.

“I’m not in the mood,” Jisung says when he sees that it’s Jeongin. He turns, and Jeongin blocks the arm that would’ve hit him disguised as lack of spacial awareness. 

“Neither am I,” Jeongin says. “But I doubt either of us will ever be.”

Jisung snorts. If Minho had any sense of timing he’d be back now. But. No dice.

“Tell me,” Jeongin says, insistent. “What the hell were you talking about?” Jisung tries to walk around him but he blocks it, angry now. His tail’s puffed. “Jisung.”

Jisung bristles. “Did I ever tell you I hate my name? Yeah. Looks like you never really listened, huh?” 

“What are you—”

“And it’s  _ hyung.  _ Technically. I’m older than you. Maybe respect me enough to call me an equal at least before deliberately antagonizing me.” He smacks away the hand Jeongin throws out and retreats into the apartment. “At least Felix understands what he did.”

He sees the blow coming before it happens, smack in the middle of his back, so he lets his body follow the motions of falling, slides himself back and over and yanks Jeongin down to join him. It’s easy to flip them so he’s in control, scowling down as Jeongin squirms below. “Fuck off,” Jeongin snaps, and Jisung rolls his eyes. 

“You really do have a lot of aggression to work through, baby bread.” Another snarl, and claws scrape over his skin, but he can ignore that. “Maybe learn to take things less personally. Or not. Up to you.”

“It is personal,” Jeongin says, still trying to free himself.  _ “You said so,  _ yourself.”

“I left for me,” Jisung says. “Not because of you. I left to give myself a life I deserve.”

“Why didn’t you  _ say  _ something?”

Jisung stands, leaving Jeongin to scramble to his feet on his own. He watches the tension drain out of the room like water through a sieve, the two of them staring at each other, contractually mandated truce permeating the air between them. Not that it stopped Jeongin before. “Would you have listened?”

Jeongin tails him back to the kitchen. Jisung tries not to look too exasperated. His ears are flat but there’s no aggression in his expression or his posture. He’s upset.

“When did you stop being happy?”

“You’re obsessed with the idea of happiness,” Jisung tells him, pulling ramen from the cupboard. “I was happy sometimes, when we were together, the three of us. I was happy sometimes when you or Felix cuddled with me through the night when my anxiety got to be too much. I was happy seeing you happy.” He sets the pot down on the stove maybe too loudly, because Jeongin jumps and his tail puffs up. “But I wasn’t… I guess the word would be content.”

Jeongin watches him boil the water in silence. “Why don’t you just do it magically?” He asks suddenly, watching Jisung dump the noodles and seasoning in. He’s not in the mood for dissecting that, it seems. 

Jisung shrugs. “It’s a waste of energy.”

“I forgot,” Jeongin says, like it’s a revelation, “Just how lazy you are.”

“Excuse me for preferring to take the optimal path,” Jisung snorts. “I don’t expend my energy on things I don’t need to expend it on.” 

“Like you are with this search?”

Jisung stills. 

Jeongin hops up to sit on the counter, leaning over to inspect the ramen. “You’re holding back.”

The spoon in his hand creaks. He’d be surprised if the metal wasn’t bent out of shape when he let go. It’s unacceptable. He shouldn’t be losing control like that, not over Jeongin. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You were always more powerful than us,” Jeongin scoffs. “As much as we denied it, as much as we claimed you were weaker because of your species—we knew in a true fight, you’d wipe the floor with both of us in a second. But you hold back.” He takes the spoon from Jisung’s loose fingers, doesn’t blink at the deformed handle. He just scoops up a bit of the broth and tastes it. “You’ve always held back.”

“Jeongin,” Jisung says lowly. “Shut up.”

“Are you going to deny it?”

He curls his fingers into his palms, barely registering pinpricks of pain at the contact. “Give me back the spoon.”

“You’re dodging.”

There are other spoons. So many other spoons. Perfect, non deformed, usable spoons. 

“You could find him,” Jeongin says plainly. “You could kill him. You wouldn’t even break a sweat. I’ve seen you do it, remember? That joint mission, where we were so lost, but you—”

“Give me the spoon.” 

“—tracked him to the second—”

“The spoon.”

“—dismemb—”

“Jeongin,” Jisung says, demeanor entirely tepid, but the cold creeps in anyway. Cold, cold, cold, icy fingers at the back of his neck, Death peering over his shoulder—figuratively, anyway. The words command attention. Jeongin’s jaw clatters shut so his teeth can chatter. His skin has gone white, his eyes wide, ears back. Jisung wishes he could feel satisfaction but all he feels is tired. 

He just wants to eat his ramen. 

“Give me the damn spoon.”

* * *

“Tell me.”

Jisung keeps excusing it to himself, like, ‘we were kids’, ‘they didn’t know better’. And they didn’t. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t fuck him up so bad he and Changbin worked for years to fix the damage to his mentality and still, really, have a while to go. 

Fae are taught, unceremoniously, that humans are weak. Humans are lesser. Humans are, in a word, the worms left stranded on scorching asphalt after a rain. Helpless, useless, and unintelligent. Incapable. Unable to make decisions where decisions need to be made. Without judgement, without feeling. 

Simple. 

Magic or not. 

Jisung doesn’t remember when he was first brought to the court—he was a baby—but he supposes that’s what fucked him up the most. He grew up with people telling him that he was that worm. Nothing he did would change that. He was the worm, the court was the boot, and his peers were the kids who’d stand to the side and watch and point and laugh. 

As he grew older, when he met Felix and Jeongin and they… well, they did like him! They liked him as much as he liked them, but they had some bias they couldn’t outgrow… he did manage to outgrow the worm label. When the court realized he was aging as they were, they assumed he was trading favors to buy life extensions—something Gifted humans can do if they have contact with fae—but he wasn’t. 

He was just aging slowly. Mimicking them. Trying to be the same. He may be human but because of his magic (because of  _ Death), _ his lifespan matches that of fae or mer. Not that any of them—including him—knew that at the time. 

He outgrew the worm label and became a dog. And what’s the hallmark of dogs, as a whole?

Felix came first. Curiosity, maybe. Felix had always been eager to learn.

Jisung was hiding, again, in his shared room, makeshift curtains drawn around his bed. The others played with each other in the halls, screeching and laughing and having fun, but he stayed back. He didn’t want to get hurt, and he was scared they’d hurt him. They’d been treating him like an experiment ever since he’d arrived, and he was only five at the time (having spent four years where the court ordered him in isolation, reading copious amounts of texts to ‘catch up’), and he wasn’t sure what he could do. The adults never listened to him, after all, always taking the real fae children’s testimony over his. 

The curtains were drawn back sharply and a small chubby face poked inside. “Hello?”

“Hi,” Jisung said quietly, backing into a corner. He knew better, by then, than to pretend to be asleep. 

The child’s face splits into a grin. “Hi! I’m Felix.” He climbed inside and Jisung shrunk further. “And you?”

“Han.” 

“Hannie,” Felix said, patting him on the head. Clumsy. “I think we’ll be friends.” He offered him a stick of jerky. 

Jisung hadn’t eaten that day, too afraid to venture into the mess hall alone. He took the jerky and Felix beamed. 

He was, he now realized, very equivalent to a skittish wild animal. And that’s definitely how Felix saw him. 

In the present, Jeongin still stands in front of him. Open and listening. He’d taken the half-bowl of ramen Jisung had handed him and scarfed it down quietly. He watched as Jisung took his time, biding his own, and stood to follow him into the kitchen. He dried the dishes as Jisung handed them to him. He waited to be sure Jisung was completely finished. 

Jisung figures he deserves a bone. 

“You—both of you—treated me like shit. Like I was an object you owned. Everyone in the realm treated me like an extension of Lix—like his fucking attack dog—if my magic capacity wasn’t as high as it was I’m sure it would only have been worse. I only thought what I felt was happiness because that’s all I’d ever known. But Hyunjin showed me what was really happening, and he helped me escape and find somewhere I could actually be happy. Where I could actually be _free.”_ Jisung presses a hand to his eyes. “You were taught humans don’t have the same needs as you, that we don’t have the same emotional complexity as you, that we can be bought with food and shelter and minor companionship—we’re just as observant, Jeonginnie. I just never had the context to realize what you two were doing to me.”

Passing remarks. What Jisung would do to get Felix’s praise. ‘Dog’ is apt. 

Jeongin looks a bit like he’d been punched in the gut. Jisung’s sure he’s never seen it that way—after all, he can see certain comparisons with companion animals. Dogs and cats have long been domestic, they’re happy to be a part of human families, and morally it’s okay. But your dog wants the chocolate you’re eating, and you drop a large chunk on the floor, and you yank him away to stop him from eating it. He’s angry, he’s hurt, and he wants the food, but he doesn’t know he’ll die if he eats it. It’s what the human knows is good for the pet, that the pet doesn’t understand.  _ That’s _ how fae view humans, and Jisung felt that yank way too many times. But he knows the chocolate will kill him. He’s not stupid, or simple in the way fae think humans are. He won’t eat it if left unsupervised. 

Okay, maybe he’d take a bite, but that’s on him, specifically. Not his humanity.

Felix probably came about this realization the hard way—staring down a (half) human he’s started to feel fond of, watching and finally understanding the complexities of human thought. Comparing him to Jisung, as his only other reference point. 

There’d been fear on his face when Jisung realized who he was. He knows, now, how much damage he did. 

And Jisung sort of wants to tell them—fuck, there were good times, too. Times that if he takes out of context almost could be normal kids (and later, he supposes college kids) fucking around. But overall neither of them were actively malicious, and he  _ wants _ to blame the lack of education more than anything. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Jisung says. “I moved on, you will too, if you haven’t already.”

Jeongin startles, suddenly, tilting his head like a curious dog at a noise Jisung can’t hear. 

“Found him?” Jisung asks. He pings Minho, who answers back that he’s hurrying over.

Jeongin grins, conversation forgotten. “It’s go time.”

* * *

He’s expecting it, this time. The minute he lands Felix appears as well, knocking him down—but not fast enough to realize that he’s not alone. 

Jeongin shoves him back and off Jisung, sharp tendrils of magic caging him in. 

“What—” is all Felix gets out in surprise before he’s forced to toss an expansion bubble onto the ground, because Jeongin’s magic got too close. 

Assuming they’ll be occupied, Jisung drags himself up and over to Chan, who’s standing stock still and wide-eyed, but he underestimated Felix’s determination to protect him because Felix rips himself away from Jeongin with a shriek to cast a blessing over Chan that forces Jisung a step back and blows Minho (who’d been creeping over towards him) off his feet and headfirst into a wall. 

Now where the fuck did he learn that?

“Minho?” Chan says, reaching out, but he’s out cold so Jisung banishes him back to Haven. Seungmin will take care of him, off relationship or no. 

“Consorting with demons?” Felix says, mostly to Jeongin, since he’s the only one of them left that’s speciesist. 

Jeongin growls, “You’re one to talk,” and Jisung, meanwhile, temporarily cuts himself off from his own magic (the blessing Felix used protects Chan from magic, not malice—he likely assumed, correctly, that it would’ve done nothing if it  _ was _ intent-focused) to step forward into Chan’s space. 

And, well. He didn’t think he’d get this far, honestly. 

The Prince is handsome, no doubt about that. His eyes are still wide in what might be wonder, and Jisung absently wonders why he isn’t scared. 

“Lix said you were here to kill me,” he says. 

Jisung frowns. “I’m not.” They turn in unison when there’s a loud crash to find Jeongin pushing himself up dazedly in a dumpster while Felix backs up slightly to regroup. “Our problem’s with him, not you.”

“What’d he do?”

“It’s complicated.” He watches, as Jeongin takes another hit. As satisfying as it is to see them turn against each other, for a change, they’re in the open and they’ll be drawing attention soon. “Sorry, dude.”

“For—?”

Jisung wraps runes around his wrists and waist, lifting him into the air. Securely, because he doesn’t actually want to hurt him. Even if Jisung’s knocked out Chan will stay suspended—he’s tested the failsafes. Chan will be fine. 

Jisung doesn’t even need to draw Felix’s attention away from Jeongin because Chan does it himself. 

“LIX!” Panic bubbling in his throat, overflowing into his voice. 

Felix turns, and Jisung sees the horror overtake his face in slow motion before Jeongin nails him between the shoulder blades as he’d done to Jisung earlier that day, and Felix hits the ground, breath knocked out of him, only barely catching himself on his hands. He heaves, and Jeongin looks over his bowed head to lock eyes with Jisung. “Seven billion alive,” he says. “One billion dead.” Jeongin isn’t strapped for units, he’s one of the higher ranked hunters, the ones that don't need to take that kind of thing into consideration, so. It feels like a death sentence. Felix hears it too, if the tensing is any indication, but he’s tired. 

He hasn’t gotten up yet. Likely, he can’t.

Jisung doesn’t want him to die. 

It’s a morbid realization, really. 

“Wait,” Felix says. “If you— Please.  _ Please  _ let him go.” 

He’s talking about Chan, Jisung realizes. But why is he so determined…? Is he really just so in love that he won’t even beg for his own life?

“You’re not in a position to ask anything,” Jeongin says. 

“He has no magic,” Felix says, stressing each word.  _ “He can’t do magic.  _ He’s not a threat. He never will be.”

“And yet the King is more determined to find him than he was to save any of his other children from certain death,” Jeongin says, clearly disbelieving. Jisung doesn't blame him. He doesn't believe it either. 

Jisung lowers Chan, slowly, watching the two of them talk. Listening. 

“Because he has capacity.” 

Wait.

No.

_ No. _

“He can carry magic,” Felix says. “But he can’t generate it.”

“Level eight?” Jisung asks, breaking his silence.

“Ten.”

Jeongin sucks air in through his teeth. “Units?”

Felix looks at Jisung, beseeching. Whatever he’s looking for, he doesn't find it. His shoulders sag. If Jisung looks closely, he thinks he sees him mouth, ‘I’m sorry’ to Chan. 

Jeongin kicks him. Gentle enough not to do damage, sharp enough to get his attention.  _ “Units?” _

“Twenty billion,” Jisung says, before Felix can. “Right?”

There’s resignation in his glare. 

“Fuck,” Jeongin says. “That fucking bounty—“

“They’d give him to you,” Felix says, ignoring him, eyes bored into Jisung like Chan’s not right there. “Incentive to draw you back. And you'd take it." He would. For this— "Because if they didn’t give him to you they’d give him to someone who wants you dead.” Yes. 

No other Compass he's heard of has level ten capacity. 

Dragging along another human is tedious, though—but—possibly—there is a way—

“You can’t beat that. Not even with your black opal.”

Jeongin’s heel digs into Felix’s back, but Felix is unrelenting. Last ditch. 

Appealing, ironically, to Jisung’s humanity. 

“You know what they do to people like you. You know what they’ll do to him.”

Jisung wants to kill him. Jisung wants to tear his throat out with his  _ teeth _ he wants  _ blood _ he wants he wants he wants in blue rage. Cold rage. But he’ll never act on it because he wants Felix to live. So instead Jisung wants to leave. He wants to be far away from Lee Felix and his words. 

Chan watches him silently. Jisung wonders what he thinks of him. He wonders if Felix talked about him at all. 

“Are you just going to stand there?” Jeongin asks him. “You got what you wanted.”

Jisung never said Chan was what he wanted. He barely knows what he wants himself. “Are you going to kill him?”

“No.”

Felix groans, lets his head fall to the ground with a dull thud. “I’d really prefer it.”

Jeongin’s jaw clenches. 

The shift comes before Jisung can see it. At first he thinks Jeongin’s actually gearing up to kill him, but Jeongin’s as surprised as he is, Felix even more so—but Felix uses the presence of mind he has of being alert to move, surprising Jeongin, so the three of them are triangled around Chan. “I guess neither of you brought the cavalry…” 

The quiet buzz of magic. A trap. A bubble with no way out. 

They’re surrounded.

“You sold us out!” Jisung spits, gearing for offense and pulling from the opal to launch a net at Jeongin, but the fox just spins and phases through it. 

“I didn’t!” he yells back. 

Felix curses, pulling Chan back so he’s between the three of them, and turns out to face the cavalry. “We can’t fight all of them.”

“I’m not fighting, anyway,” Jeongin says. “I might not have sold you out but I’m not siding against the fucking court!”

Jisung groans. This doesn’t look good at  _ all. _

He tries to keep Chan between him and Felix when he can, but at some point it just simply isn’t feasible. He pinches his nose and decides that Felix is capable of screaming for help if it really comes to it, and dives into the fight for real. 

Well. As real as he’ll get. 

The first wave was easy. They’d stuck together on that one—though Jeongin disappeared to fuck knows where to avoid getting stuck between two sides. Felix calls him a coward under his breath. Jisung wonders if you can really call it that. “Self-preservation” sings the same tune. 

The second wave is where shit gets ugly. Someone gets him across the cheek with a sword—he’s lucky it wasn’t his neck. 

The third wave—

At this point he stops counting waves and starts categorizing the fighters by type. Fifty percent magic leaning, fifty percent physical. They cut it down to thirty percent physical by the time he has to stop tracking, because he doesn’t  _ actually _ have an unlimited supply of magic, as much as the court would like to believe. 

A woman he doesn’t recognize stabs the ground in front of him with a spear. It’s enough of a distraction that he doesn’t notice the swords swinging at his head until the last minute and dodges a hair too slow, which throws him off enough that he doesn’t see the magical fire, at which point he’s dousing it and shielding himself thoroughly enough that he forgets to mind his side and a sledgehammer of pure magic slams into his thigh, and he swears he  _ hears _ the bone snap. 

Heavy pressure and clinking fragments. 

Someone targeted the opal. 

Any magic he’d stored is gone. 

He can’t walk, not like this—he says a mental apology to Changbin and pulls hard on their magic deposit, giving the shields enough power to run automatically for some time so he can drop to his good side and run fingers over the battered flesh of the other. 

Healing magic was never his thing. And he’s alone here because Death would just recommend temporary amputation. Not a help. 

The shield falters for a moment and something slips through. He weakly curls magic in the space between his palms, desperate, but Felix merely crouches in front of him and reaches for his bad leg. Jisung trusts him at this point to be firmly in the enemy-of-my-enemy camp, so he braces. 

“Can I?”

That’s new. 

Felix was good at healing. Always has been. He was the one sought after for the harder wounds, the wounds that would, on a normal human, be permanent or fatal. He was always praised for his painless delivery and pleasant bedside manner—his patients would wax poetic about how gentle he was, how soft his palm. 

But never Jisung. 

He remembers breaking an ankle, once, playing, and he was happy to be around Felix, having heard the praise, but Felix didn’t even wait for him to ask before grabbing the ankle and—

He’d lost his voice, that day, screaming. (He was walking good as new after only a second, where the nurse would’ve hurt him more and taken longer, so he was grateful, but he began to doubt the rumors from then on. Now he knows that it wasn’t deliberate—well, it was, but Felix didn’t go out of his way to cause pain. It just takes more magic to tamp down the nervous system response and fae don’t get adequate human anatomy lessons, hence Felix’s approach. So Jisung of now is glad Felix of then hadn’t attempted to take away the pain. If he had, Jisung might’ve lost mobility.)

Maybe Felix can see it in his face. 

“Sungie,” he says, softly. “I’m—”

A boom rattles the shield. The assailants all pile on, focussed on the two of them.

“Do it,” Jisung snaps, looking away. 

He doesn’t want an apology. 

After all, how can he continue to be angry if Felix has learned? How can he continue to be angry if Felix will yield to his screams, will nod along and  _ listen, _ for once? There’s no punishment here that would make Jisung feel better. And he thinks Felix has already started that journey of knowing he caused pain to someone he love(s)d with his actions (because there’s no question that Felix loves(d) him. He knows that like he breathes air. He knows that like he knows the sky is blue-black and illuminated by the sun. He knows that like it’s a fact of the cosmos). 

He traces sigils that sizzle in his anger. They pulse with the yearning to be used. 

“Done.”

He felt nothing. 

Felix pulls him to his feet, and hesitates with their fingers still intertwined. 

Jisung pulls him into a hug that lasts for the millisecond it takes for the shield to break. He explodes outwards, then, sigils gleefully singing, bowling over the legions, unraveling himself in a dimension where he glitters gold feathers in darkness. He spreads and surrounds, pinning Felix’s pebble down and engulfing it in an embrace as the rest of him spikes up and obliterates what he can reach. 

But reinforcements flood in. Whatever number wave this is.

“I think I forgave you a long time ago,” Jisung whispers into the brief quiet. “But I can never forget.”

They’re separated in the melee, and he can't hear Felix's response. 

Jisung fights with teeth bared, giving what he can until he has nothing left. The waves keep coming and coming until the bubble is all but a writhing mass of limbs, fish in a fucking barrel. He crawls through the shadows that are the fae focussed on other dimensions. He reaches and reaches and finally, he hits flesh. 

It’s Chan, unfortunately. Or fortunately, depending on how you view it. Jisung tightens his grip on Chan’s arm and drags him closer. With the cover he has, he braces himself and closes his eyes, trusting Chan’s human instincts to scream if something comes for either of them. He casts a flimsy image of himself out into the void that takes up the park. 

_ —Felix screams, surrounded by— _

_ —he’s caged in, they’re netting him— _

_ —even if Jisung were there— _

_ —not enough— _

_ —Jisung if you hear— _

_ —run RUN— _

_ —RUN— _

(When they were really little, he couldn’t do magic at  _ all, _ had no idea how, so their teachers would yell at Jisung a lot. They’d call him stupid, slow, weak. He couldn’t keep up with the class. 

The other students would pick that up, would learn they could do it too. 

That was the only time they’d physically hurt him. 

Felix found him, when he was late to dinner. He found him and saw them kicking him, surrounding him, backing him into a corner and painting him black and blue. So Felix punched one of them in the face, chopped another on the neck, shoved his way through to throw Jisung out of the circle, where he could barely stand—but the others weren’t focused on him anymore. 

“Run, Hannie,” Felix told him, anger a storm in his eyes. They circled him until Jisung couldn’t see him, until he was a needle in the haystack of their huddle, unfindable, and drifting even as Jisung itched to reach out to find him.  _ “RUN!” _ )

Jisung jolts back into his body when Chan’s nails dig into his skin, just in time to dive on top of him and release a pulse of energy that throws back the five that had been approaching. It’s too much. He doesn’t have much left to give. He can’t… he can’t survive this without… He holds tight to Chan and says, quietly, “Don’t let go.”

And then he lets himself fall. 

YOU CALLED?

It’s one thing to speak to them. It’s another to ask this. 

But Jisung doesn’t have time for pleasantries. “I need power.”

I GIVE YOU A LOT OF POWER.

He tests the wards of the bubble. “I need more.”

IT WILL HURT YOU.

“I don’t need it for long. Can you help or not?” The alternative is running to the boundary, and Jisung would like to avoid that, thanks.

TAKE IT.

It’s… so much. Jisung gasps, and his skin heats until he can’t feel it anymore, and when he opens his eyes Chan flinches away. He wonders if they’re like Minho’s. Or maybe, glowing white. It’s been too long since he’s done this—let Death in—and he never looked in a mirror when he did it, before. Either way. He blinks, slowly, and when he inhales it feels like he’s breathing in sand, pinpricks of pain all the way down the inside of his throat. 

The magic buzzes under his skin, itching to be released. He likens it to tensing your finger on the trigger of a gun, the beat before your entrance in a song, knowing what your instrument can do, knowing what you can do, feeling the anticipation rip through your body before finally, finally,  _ finally _ achieving release—Chan holds onto his arms, which is probably good because Jisung can’t feel his own fingers right now—and he locks onto Changbin (anchor) (desperation) (safe) (home) and  _ PUSHES _ through the wards, magic dense and heavy and sharp—they tense and tense and tense and tense and tense

and buckle.

He  _ rips _ through the wards, which flutter around them, a deflating balloon releasing air, and then they’re out of the void and back in normal Seoul, and from there it’s easy to follow his senses and find Changbin and Minho.

Jisung lands badly on his ankle, but he rolls so he gets the brunt of it and Chan lands on him instead of the floor. 

_ Thank you, _ he says to Death. 

I’M GLAD YOU LIVED.

Jisung snorts. And then he wheezes. “Hey, man,” he says to Chan, who’s still, staring at him, shellshocked. “Can you scoot off me please? Otherwise I might projectile vomit in your face.”

Chan hurries to roll away, just in time for Jisung to spew what was dinner onto the floor. 

“Oh, fuck, J—Han, what the fuck!” 

“Binnie,” Jisung says, relieved. “Baby.” Changbin catches him before his arms buckle, pulling him into a tight hug that Jisung collapses into, breath rattling, his body barely coping with the power influx Death had lent him. 

“I take it that went well,” Seungmin says drily from the doorway. Chan, at this point, has scooted himself against a wall, and pushed himself to standing, staring at all of them warily. 

“We were ambushed,” Jisung says. Changbin helps him up. “I swear the entire fucking court was there.”

“They really want you, huh,” Seungmin says to Chan. 

Chan shrugs halfheartedly. “I guess they do.”

Jisung winces. “Minho...?”

“He’s resting,” Seungmin says. “I healed him.”

That’s good, at least. 

“So, I.N.?” Changbin asks. “And Felix?”

Chan tenses. “We left them behind—”

“Felix told me to run,” Jisung says, shaking his head. “That’s what I was doing after I found you—I was going to try to get to him but he was overwhelmed, and they already had him down, and he kept yelling for me to run. You’re very,  _ very _ lucky I found you in that melee when I did.” It goes unspoken—Compass or not, if Jisung had to save himself, he had to save himself. 

“And I.N.?”

Jisung flattens his mouth to a line. “He can take care of himself. He’s part of the court, anyway, and they have no reason to doubt him.”

Changbin nods, and Jisung tries to stand straight despite wanting desperately to keep clinging. “I’m sorry about Felix.” 

Chan’s mouth thins, and he looks away. “Are you?”

Jisung doesn’t know how to justify it all—bringing Jeongin in was a calculated mistake. Felix was always going to be the collateral, even if he hadn’t thought the conflict was going to be that large. 

He needed backup, and he needed a tracker.

“You were my priority,” Jisung says. “Felix can handle himself.”

“We were fine before you showed up,” Chan says. 

“I’ve spent years dedicating time to covering up my tracks,” Jisung snaps. “The court’s after me almost as much as they’re after you, and for a hell of a lot longer. They haven’t found me because  _ I’m good at what I do.  _ I covered Minho, and I covered Jeongin. I even fucking covered you.” He reaches up to flick the earring. “They found Felix. Not you. Not me. Not Minho or Jeongin. Felix. He did what he could to protect you, but it was never going to be enough.” 

“And now what,” Chan says, still on edge. He folds his arms, leans right into Jisung’s space. “You’ll just let me go?”

“We wait for shit to cool down,” Jisung says, bristling himself. “And then I coat you in anti-fae charms so strong you’re immediately launched several fucking cities away from me, and then you can go live your normal mundane life to your heart’s content.” He leans right back, forcing Chan to back up so their noses don’t bump. “Okay?”

A slow blink. Long and sullen. He backs down. “Okay.”

“Good,” Jisung says, tossing the attitude out the window and pivoting to drag Changbin to the bedroom. “The guest room’s three doors to the left. Don’t leave the house. Bin and I are gonna go have a long cuddle.”

“Just a cuddle?” Seungmin calls teasingly.

Just a cuddle. 

He deserves that, at least. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ://////////////////// 
> 
> ah my head hurts :( sorry if i missed anything weird in this, i didn't fully read it through... 
> 
> lmao nah but ive had SO much shit to do between classes (i still havent done my hw for my algorithms class................ ew proofs) and like. moving (i finally have bedding lm a o) i barely had time to write and that's Sad
> 
> this is the end of jisung pov tho  
> hehe who's neeeeeeext :D


	4. 2.1 - chan.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> chan reflects and makes a friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no cws for this one! except a few people say chan was technically kidnapped, and there is one line of minor implied offscreen sexual content, but i dont think either of those are too severe lol
> 
> note pov change hehehe
> 
> also ow going back to referring to jisung as han was hard i kept forgetting hhhhkjssdf

They’re kind to him.

That’s… he hadn’t expected them to be kind.

Chan quietly thanks the scary one—Seungmin, Han had called him—for the plate of food he’d dropped off, and summarily retreats back to what’s been dubiously dubbed “his” room. They let him lock it, but he knows that all of them are perfectly capable of breaking it down in a second, so there’s really no point. And the windows are stuck shut and protected with some kind of magic, too. Not that he wants to leave. 

The day they’d arrived Seungmin had sat him down and explained, in detail, what would probably happen to him if he left. Han has a protective bubble set up, and if Chan makes it outside he’s mincemeat. Or, well, a puppet, to be more accurate. If he falls into his father’s hands—and wow, that’s a weird notion—then the court will brainwash him and force him to do unspeakable things. 

According to Han, who Chan had seen a grand total of once after being essentially kidnapped a week or so ago, South Korea is crawling with fae. They’ll have to wait for them to calm down, possibly a few months, before Chan can risk leaving. Chan suggested he could return him to Australia, but… 

Han had turned and refused to meet his eyes. “Chan,” he’d said quietly. “I’m sorry.” 

Han had visited his house. It was, according to him, in shambles.

There’s a possibility that his mom is under some kind of state protection, but… 

He can’t really afford to think too hard about it now. There’s nothing he can do. He has to be strong until he can get away. 

He’d seen Minho a few times, and that had been a bit of a shock—that he’d been friendly with Chan at first solely to spy on him—he doesn’t know what to do with that. So he avoids Minho as much as he can. 

In fact, the only person he actually regularly sees is Changbin. 

He’s been staying in what he’s discovered is Changbin and Han’s house, though Han is never there for some reason that no one bothers to tell him, and Changbin sort of hovers distantly like he’s worried Chan will actually try to run. 

The two of them have been eating together, as well, and Chan’s tried to get some kind of information, or get to know him at all, because it would probably be good to have someone who might be on his side for smaller things. For the most part, Changbin humors him. He doesn’t tell him anything about Han, which Chan supposes he understands—he’s not sure the exact nature of their relationship but they’re definitely closer than just simple friends—but he does talk a bit about the dumb shit his other friends have gotten up to.

It just happened so quick. 

“Who was that,” Chan had asked after the confrontation at Toast, clutching onto Felix like a lifeline. 

Felix barked a laugh. He was still reeling, Chan thinks. He was still reeling and hurt and terrified, heart jackrabbiting so fast Chan can feel it over his own pulse. “An old friend.” 

“How did…” Han had beaten him so  _ quick, _ but Felix had just… he’d just… 

“He was a friend,” Felix repeated. “I know his Name. I promised never to use it against him…” he exhales loudly, harshly, knocks his forehead into Chan’s shoulder. “Just another promise I’ve broken, lately…” 

Chan hadn’t known what to say. Still doesn’t, but, well. 

He’d met Felix a few months ago. He’d thought it was a cliche cafe meet cute. He’d stumbled into him, knocked Felix’s coffee—iced, thankfully—right onto his white shirt. No amount of apologizing made him feel better so he’d bought him a replacement and gave him his hoodie—a plain black one, he had many of those—to cover the stain. They’d gotten to talking as they waited, and Chan’s ten minute coffee run turned into two hours, and Felix offered his phone number and shyly asked if he would see him again, and Chan had said yes.

And they’d met up again. And again. And again. They’d inched closer and fell into each other and Chan had  _ thought _ it was love.

And then one day, Felix had shown up at Chan’s shitty apartment, when Chan had never given him the address (due to paranoia and his mom’s insistence), and he’d hurried Chan to gather up his identifying documents and anything he’s attached to—he’d sounded so urgent and scared and Chan had trusted him. Maybe more than he should have. 

They’d gotten out. Felix had taken a magic equivalent of a bullet for him. And Chan finally understood his urgency and dragged him up and under cover, and Felix had asked if Chan trusted him, and Chan had said he did, and Felix had taken his hand and teleported them away.

And Felix had told him the truth.

Part of it, anyway.

But now he’s here. 

And Felix is gone. 

“Hey,” Changbin says. 

Chan’s curled on the couch staring somewhat blankly at the wall. He doesn’t have much to do, really, so he’s taken to just… thinking. “Hi.”

Changbin leans over the back and tilts his head a bit to look at Chan clearly. He’s holding a half-eaten popsicle. “Han’s bringing back dinner,” he says. “Do you want anything in particular?”

He wants to go back to a semi-normal life. He wants to know if Felix is okay. He wants to not be here. “What are my options?”

Changbin rattles off a menu by heart. Chan asks for chicken. Then he asks for juice. He doesn’t ask to leave. 

“Got it,” Changbin says. “He’ll be back at six.”

“What does he do?” Chan asks, before Changbin can withdraw. 

Changbin pauses, and swings himself over the back of the couch to plant himself cross legged on a cushion next to him. “He runs a store.”

Chan’s a little ashamed that his first thought is some kind of arms store, or an illegal underground assassin hub. Felix had said Han was retired, but him coming after Chan didn’t seem too retired to him. 

“Just trinkets,” Changbin says. “Spells, sometimes.” His gaze goes just to the left and Chan consciously doesn’t touch the obsidian earring.  _ It’s protection, _ Felix had told him quietly.  _ The best magical protection you could have. Don’t ever take it off.  _

Han sells spells. Han claimed to have been covering him when the ambush happened. Felix wouldn’t tell him where he got it. 

It’s an easy equation. 

“But lately he’s been poking the hornet’s nest,” Changbin admits. “Or the sleeping dragon. Whatever you prefer.” He picks at the couch. “He won’t admit it, especially to you, but he’s looking for Felix.”

That brings him some kind of relief, at least. Felix had said something about turning his back on everything he’d ever known to protect him. Chan doubts that there’s anyone else looking, and he wishes he could help, but he knows next to nothing about this world, and he’s powerless anyway. His father said so (in one of the only memories he has of him), his mother said so (matter-of-fact, a warning, with quiet comparisons to his father’s ‘employees’ and what they’d do to him), Felix said so ( _ he’s not a threat, he never will be _ ), and even Han—Han, who he’s spoken to for a grand total of maybe five minutes, who wrote him off immediately as dead weight and hasn’t even bothered to check in on him. 

“I’m glad,” Chan says quietly. “Is the situation looking any better…?”

Changbin grimaces. “No better than the last time you asked.”

Still months out, then. He has no idea why he’s waiting for some kind of miracle drop in activity. It’s not going to happen. Even if he still doesn’t entirely get the whole capacity deal (Felix was translucent at best about why exactly he of all people is important), he understands how much they want to find him. 

“Are you doing okay?”

It’s the first time he’s been asked since he got here. Changbin’s tried to prompt him to talk a few times but not outright like that. It’s a little strange. “Not really,” he says honestly. 

Changbin nods, unsurprised. “I’m sorry you got caught up in this.”

“I was born into it,” Chan says bitterly. “It’s not anyone’s fault but my father’s.”

“We still played a part.”

They did. But still. Better here than being brainwashed, he supposes. Even if he might’ve been able to stay with Felix. 

* * *

He’s built a picture in his head. 

Han is absent, most of the time. According to what Changbin told him this isn’t usual, it’s just the whole court-wanting-Chan-brainwashed thing, but Chan takes it and runs with it, because he has nothing to do but stare at walls and wonder about what could have been, what is, and what will be. 

Han features prominently. He thinks up an elaborate backstory—spurned lovers, blah blah, where Han broke Felix’s heart and left him to pick up the pieces—and gives him the temperament and morals of a comic book villain. He knows that’s not what the man is actually like—he’d seen him when Changbin had appeared, after the ambush, face lit up with relief and  _ love. _ He remembers Han throwing himself on top of him to protect him when a few fae got too close. Han’s not heartless, he’s not a monster. But it’s easy to pretend he is when he never sees him.

“Hyu- _ uuuung,” _ Han whines in front of him, oblivious to Chan struggling to remove the comic book association, “You said the last Melona was  _ miiiiiiine.” _

Changbin shrugs, unrepentant. “You said you’d be home by three. If you were here at three maybe your Melona would still be in the freezer.” 

Han closes the freezer door with a huff and, seemingly forgetting their audience, takes two big steps forward so he’s crowding Changbin against the counter. “It was mine,” he pouts, inches from Changbin’s face. Chan holds absolutely still, unwilling to even try backing away in case he makes noise and one of them looks up at him and gets mad at him for being in their space, nevermind that they’re the ones forcing him to be in their space in the first place. 

“So?” Changbin teases. He flicks Han’s forehead, and Han reels back, palm pressed to his skin dramatically. 

“Ow,” he says. Chan sort of expected more theatrics, but he supposes the half-hearted kick Han delivers to Changbin’s shins qualifies. “Top ten anime betrayals.” 

“Shut up and go set the table,” Changbin says, smacking Han’s ass as he goes. Han makes a face at his back but he does skulk off towards the dining room. “Sorry,” he says to Chan, a little amused. “He’s just like that. You can loosen up though. He won’t bite.” 

“Unless you’re into that!” Han shouts from the other room. Chan can  _ feel _ his ears go bright red. 

Changbin laughs at him. “I’ll tell him to tone it down if you’re uncomfortable.”

“No,” Chan says hurriedly. “It’s fine, I’m just.” He waves a hand, like that means anything. “Not used to it.”

“PDA or gay people?”

Chan chokes. “Uh. PDA. I’m, uh, bisexual.” 

“You can still be unused to gay people,” Changbin says. He steps out of the way idly as a drawer tugs itself open and forks slowly float out and towards where Han’s banging stuff around in the dining room. “Humans aren’t really accepting of that stuff.”

“My mom is,” Chan says. “But yeah, I get what you’re saying.”

They sort of just stand around the kitchen. Chan has a feeling Changbin sent Han away because he could tell Chan was getting uncomfortable, because there’s really no reason they shouldn’t be out there helping, and Han’s taking an unreasonably long time to do it. He feels a little guilty about it, but Changbin doesn’t seem too torn up about it, so.

“How’d you two meet?” Chan asks. He immediately regrets it, not because of Changbin’s reaction (a little surprised), but because the noise in the dining room stops for a brief moment before continuing.

Not completely alone then. Alright. 

“It’s a long story,” Changbin says. “Maybe some other time.” Chan nods. That’s fair enough. “How long did you know Felix?”

Ah. 

“I’ve never met him,” Changbin adds, when Chan still doesn’t move to say anything. “Just curious.”

“A few months,” Chan says. “But it’s only been a couple weeks since… uh, since he told me the truth.”

Changbin nods and moves to say more, but Han pokes his head into the kitchen. “I gave us each three forks and two knives.”

“We’re eating  _ takeout,” _ Changbin says exasperatedly. 

“I ran out of shit to do!” He disappears back into the dining room.

Well then. 

Dinner is awkward, to say the least. Chan has a feeling Han’s trying to make him feel as comfortable as possible by pretending he doesn’t exist, which really isn’t going so well as it’s only serving to make Chan feel even more awkward and on edge. 

“How’s the search going?” Changbin says at some point, oblivious to the tension. 

“It’s going,” Han says, fork scraping across his plate just a touch too hard. 

“No news?”

“Nothing promising.”

“Damn.”

And then they return to quiet. 

“Dishes are on you,” Han says when they’re done, pointing at Changbin. “I did everything else.”

Changbin rolls his eyes. “Ugh. Fine.” He stands to collect the plates and that’s when Chan realizes—

”I’ll help,” he says quickly, and nearly knocks his chair over in haste to collect silverware. Changbin starts to protest but quiets soon enough, realizing what Chan had. 

“Sorry,” he says when they enter the kitchen. 

Chan shakes his head but doesn’t say more. It’s not his fault Han makes him so wildly uncomfortable. 

Changbin appoints him dish dryer, and he quickly gets used to the comfortable rhythm of it. There’s not many dishes to do, so after they’re done Changbin takes a look at him and his fading half-smile and asks if he wants to help wash down the counter as well. Han had apparently done some experimental potion that bubbled over and covered the entire surface because he’d gotten distracted for a few hours, and they haven’t had the chance to clean it up yet. It shouldn’t be volatile, Changbin promises. 

Chan nods, and tries not to think about what Changbin clearly meant by distracted, given the red that paints itself across his face. 

By the time they’re done Chan’s actually relaxed, giggling along to Changbin’s tale of one of his friends discovering rubber duckies (he’d bought so many that the shallows by the beach became covered in an army of them). Changbin beams at him, and Chan supposes he was maybe trying to make him laugh. It’s nice, and even Han’s presence in the apartment weighing on the back of his mind isn’t enough to make an impact. 

Of course, then he follows Changbin back into the living room, and Han’s sitting at the couch, barely glancing up until he meets Chan’s gaze. 

Chan is struck, suddenly, by how small he is—he looks even smaller bundled up like he is. He can’t be much shorter than Chan but he’s lean where Chan’s bulky and hunches where Chan stands straight. He makes himself smaller by default, probably has to consciously tell himself to unfold, and while he can move with purpose when he wants to, he’s been loose and relaxed all night, his guard not up at all despite Chan being here. If he was tense, Chan could possibly imagine the magic he holds coiled and ready to go, the  _ power _ behind the one person beside the King who actually, legitimately  _ terrified  _ Felix. But he just looks so damn harmless. 

It’s a ruse. He knows it’s a ruse. Han doesn’t have his guard up because he doesn’t have to, because he could snap Chan’s spine in a second. Han is more powerful than he lets on and Chan has the advantage of  _ knowing _ that thanks to Felix, but it’s doing nothing to stop him from letting his own guard down in turn even though he, unlike Han, can’t afford to. 

Wolf in sheep’s clothing, as the saying goes. But it’s so far that--honestly, Chan finds himself second guessing if Felix was really talking about  _ this  _ Han. Like maybe there’s another Han out there and Chan ended up with the wrong one. Maybe. 

But his eyes. 

There’s a spark. His irises go a shade lighter and the bruises under his eyes darken and Chan finds himself flinching back.

When Han had taken them out of the ambush, the color in his eyes disappeared and black streaked like lightning, like cracks, trenches, chasms, outward and down his skin. 

Chan hesitates to call it frightening. Honestly in that moment he took a bit of comfort in it, in knowing that the man protecting him wasn’t as human as he seemed. 

Still, now, seeing implications of it here, with no enemy in sight, it’s a little unnerving. 

And. 

For all that Felix had tried to foist him off to Han, Chan knows he wanted them as far apart as possible. He’d made meaningful eye contact, before the ambush. Chan knows what he was trying to convey.

_ Stay away from him,  _ Felix had said days before, pressed up against Chan’s chest.  _ You can’t trust him. He’s more powerful than he seems, he’s more deadly—I don’t want you to get hurt. Please, Chan. Promise me. _

Chan nodded, and he knew Felix could feel it.  _ I promise,  _ he’d whispered.

Han raises an eyebrow.

And Chan looks away.

* * *

“I thought you said they were okay.”

“Seungmin apologized out of jealousy, we both knew they were gonna do this again.”

“I still hoped they wouldn’t.”

Chan pauses in the hall. He’d been about to go downstairs and poke around the shop again, since Changbin had brought him down a day ago and showed him some of the more interesting sections, but their hushed voices give him pause. 

The stairs he’s at the top of lead down to the back room, where Han and Changbin undoubtedly are. He wonders why they’re having this conversation now, instead of later in the privacy of their room. 

“It was a nice tension-free week while it lasted.”

Han snorts. “Oh, yeah. For you.”

“You aren’t exactly helping him feel comfortable.”

“He looks like I just killed a puppy in front of him whenever I get close. The fuck am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know, not avoid him like the plague?”

“Easier said than done with the puppy killing.”

“You just have to show him you wouldn’t harm a fly.”

A pause. 

“Uh.”

“Yeah, okay. You’re right, nevermind.”

At least he’s honest to himself. 

“He was just torn away from everything he’s known, and you make him nervous. Rightly so, given that you were literally hunting him down last week.”

“I wasn’t going to hurt him.”

“He doesn’t  _ know _ that. And he’s been with someone who you have an  _ actual _ grudge on, don’t you think maybe Felix said something to him about you in a not very flattering context? Maybe, I don’t know, fix that?”

“Hyung, if he wants to hate me he’s welcome to hate me. We just need to bear with each other for a few more weeks, and he never has to see me again. He’ll live.”

“You’re hopeless.”

_ “I’m _ hopeless? At least I’m not picking meaningless fights with my boyfriend out of frustration. They broke up about the fucking laundry.”

“You don’t  _ have _ a boyfriend.”

Oh? Chan had assumed… and Changbin said they… well. He supposes he was wrong. 

“I wouldn’t divorse my husband over laundry,” Han says indignantly. “Is that what you’re implying? Have we ever fought about laundry? Do you have some secret resentment that you’ve never told me about that’s all coming to a head now?”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Oh my god you do.”

“You  _ could _ stand to put your dirty clothes in the basket more often than you do.”

_ “Hyung.” _

“You asked!”

“I can’t believe this.”

“I wasn’t being seriou—put me  _ down!” _

“Never.”

“Ugh, don’t get sappy—I’m  _ mad _ at you!”

“No you’re not.”

“I am!”

“Not.”

“Am!”

“Not—OW.”

_ Oh, _ Chan thinks, backing away from the stairs as the two of them continue play-fighting below.  _ They’re married.  _

He thinks, longingly, of his mom. The promise he’d made to her about finding someone for himself, finding happiness where he never allowed himself to have it. Han and Changbin—whoever Han was before, he’s a better man now, with Changbin. Chan can tell, both intuitively and because he doesn’t at all match up to what little Felix had told him. 

He doesn’t doubt that Han’s still dangerous—that kind of thing definitely doesn’t go away—but maybe he’s just less likely to weaponize it. 

The two of them are happy. Happy together, happy apart, in a kind of bond Chan could only hope for. Has hoped for. The kind of bond he thought he’d had with Felix, before the rude awakening of attempts on his life began. 

So he returns to his room, sits back on his bed, and allows himself to dream. 

* * *

When he wakes up, the apartment is quiet. 

This isn’t unusual, since usually it’s just him and Changbin, but for some reason it feels especially quiet today. 

He pokes around, looking for Changbin, questions sitting at the tip of his tongue, but he can’t find him. The couple’s bedroom door is ajar as well, and Chan calls inside hesitantly, not daring to actually step inside, but no one responds. He makes his way to the common spaces, wondering if they’ve fallen asleep there.

There’s a note on the fridge.  _ Hey Chan, sorry to leave you—I had to run, a choir member broke his arm. I’m helping him out and won’t be back until around noon. Please stay inside, Han will kill me if he finds out I left you alone. _ - _ Changbin. _

Oh. Huh.

He tries, he really does. He organizes their books alphabetically, then chronologically (some of them are  _ old _ old, holy shit), then chromatically. He washes the dishes someone (Han, probably) left in the sink. He takes a spare piece of paper and scribbles words on it until he can’t think anymore, attention drawn back to the door. 

He could leave. 

He probably wouldn’t get very far, but. 

He could. 

So he does. 

They’ve been opening windows for him, and that’s nice and all, but he really just wants to walk outside. Or run. Preferably run. Seungmin had told him that the protection extends across the town, so as long as he stays within the borders he should be fine, right? Right. 

The shop is closed, and no one’s outside. He peeks out cautiously, steps one foot out and waits, but nothing happens. He lets the door shut behind him, begins to walk, and quickly picks up to a jog. Fuck, it feels nice to be outside. 

He runs mindlessly, avoiding people where he can, ducking into alleys and around corners quick enough that he’s probably being suspicious, but that’s okay. Han’s going to be mad and Changbin’s going to be disappointed regardless, because Han will definitely be able to tell that he left, but if they come back to find him back in the apartment maybe they’ll let him out for runs weekly. Or daily. Because he could run away, right now. If he was gonna do it, this would be the perfect time. 

But he won’t. 

He loses track of where he is, at some point, but he knows the direction he needs to go and he thinks he can make it back from the beach, so. He’ll be fine. He does end up on the outskirts, and that jolts him enough to remember that he should probably go back at this point. He’s gone a little too far for his comfort. 

“Hi!” 

He jumps, turning to see a girl standing behind him with a shit eating grin. “Uh… hi?”

“You’re so cute,” she coos, pinching his cheek before he could stop her. “What’s your name?”

“Uh,” Chan says. “What’s yours?”

Her smile spreads further. “You’re very careful. Humans usually aren’t very careful.” She sticks out her hand. “I’m Sana.” 

“Chan,” he says, and takes it. “Hey!” Instant regret. He feels pins and needles along that arm and his hair--yeah, it’s standing on end. He flattens his arm hair first because it’s an unnerving feeling and then runs his hands through his curls to hopefully brush out the static. Did she just magically hand-buzzer him?

“Cute,” she giggles again. “Where are you heading, Channie?”

He pauses. 

“You don’t have to tell me.” She pats his head and hooks his arm into hers, steering him around towards the center of the town. 

She’s really strong. Definitely not human. 

“What brings you here?”

Chan hesitates. He’s not sure how much he can tell her, especially if there’s even a small chance she wants the bounty. “Stuff.”

“Fun,” she says, amused. “I came out to pick flowers for my friend but then I saw you! You’re much more interesting than flowers.” 

“Thanks…?”

When she smiles at him this time, he startles back. Oh, her teeth are  _ sharp. _ She giggles at his alarm. “Oh, don’t worry. I won’t hurt you. I see the claim Hannie left on you. I’m not stupid enough to disrespect that.” 

Sorry,  _ claim? _

Sana traces a finger down his jaw and tugs his head to the side, then smooths her hand down his neck. Her skin is cold. He struggles to hold back a shiver. “Right here,” she says, tugging the earring. “Protection and claim. The claim’s newer than the protection, maybe from a week ago? But it’s still there.” She pats his cheek. He’d guess Han added this ‘claim’ to the earring after he brought Chan here, in case something like this happened. “Come on, there are prettier flowers by Dahyun’s house.” 

She chatters as she tugs him along, and he finds himself responding, relaxing. He doesn’t trust her so much as he trusts her respect for Han, but it’s still enough that when she lets go of him, he still follows her willingly. 

About halfway there, according to Sana, a hand lands on his shoulder and he jumps, shocked out of his skin, only to see Han standing behind him, entirely unamused. “Where do you think you’re going?” The question’s directed more towards Sana than him, to his relief. 

“I was gonna bring him back,” Sana pouts. 

Han sighs. “Noona...” 

“Just another minute?” 

He wavers. Glances between Chan and Sana. “If that’s what he wants.”

Chan nods, still rattled. He does like her, and only regularly interacting with two people (one, really) has been getting to him. 

Han sighs again. “You’re lucky Sana found you before someone else.” He squints at her. “Don’t take him outside town. And bring him back before sunset.”

“Of course,” Sana says. She smiles winningly. “I won’t kidnap your kidnappee. That’s just bad manners.”

Han looks up at the sky for patience and without another word, vanishes. 

“He’s tense,” Sana says. She frowns at where he was just standing. “He isn’t usually so tense.”

“I think he’s had a bad week,” Chan supplies. 

Sana nods. “Then let’s make it better!”

“What—” 

She doesn’t give him time to even form the thought, grabbing his hand and zipping away to some location unknown. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no sana didnt kidnap him he's just being dramatic
> 
> this is much later than i wanted it to be because i have been SWAMPED with coursework
> 
> i hope everyone has a better week this week <3 stay safe


	5. 2.2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which chan learns some funky new skills idk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mmmMMMMMMMM
> 
> if it says jisung anywhere i am Sorry it should say han i just 
> 
> i tried
> 
> i keep forgetting that if you highlight something and type “ it doesn’t,,, automatically surround the text you highlighted. it just deletes. smh this is what happens when u dont write for too long and have been coding with text editors that automate formatting n stuff hn

Sana ends up just wanting to pick flowers. 

She sends Chan back to Han with a bouquet, winking at him and giggling at his confusion. He tries to tell her that bouquets are viewed as romantic to humans, and Han might not be human but Chan is and he doesn’t want to even get near that kind of implication, but she just ignores him. 

When Han sees them—or, more accurately, when Chan sheepishly shoves them at him with a mumbled explanation, looking away when his face grows warm, he is, to Chan’s surprise, stunned silent. 

“Do you know what these are?” He asks, taking them almost reverently. 

If Sana gave him proposal flowers or some shit Chan is going to riot. “No?”

“These flowers literally only grow in Dahyun’s garden,” Han says. “They’re a principle component in so many potions and there’s substitutions but the result isn’t as potent—they bloom during the solstice and stay bloomed until someone cuts them, they don’t regrow until the next—Dahyun  _ never _ lets anyone have them but Sana, and Sana never gives them away—did you sell her your fucking soul?”

“Uh,” Chan says, completely taken aback. “No?”

Han stares at him for a moment longer before turning on his heel and walking away. Chan trails after him hesitantly, unsure if he was supposed to stay out in the kitchen. 

The room Han ends up in is one of the ones Chan hadn’t really looked around in, because it hadn’t looked too interesting—but Han waves a hand and shelves upon shelves of  _ stuff  _ blur into focus. Right, Chan thinks. He hid it magically. That still takes getting used to… 

He’s quick in his movements, placing the flowers over a little pedestal, where they stay suspended in the air. A quick sigil, and they… fade, sort of? And Han places a glass dome over them. “Stasis,” he says absentmindedly, still blinking at them. “They’ll stay fresh in there.” He turns to study Chan thoughtfully, and Chan holds back the urge to squirm. “She really just let you have them.”

Chan shrugs, uncomfortable. “I guess.”

“You’re certainly something,” Han says quietly. Chan’s not sure whether that’s a positive or negative sentiment, so he just grimaces. Han leans back against a shelf heavily, crosses his arms. “How are you doing?”

“Uh,” Chan says. “Fine.”

Han squints at him. “Fine?”

“Fine.”

He studies him for another moment before sighing. “Felix is being reeducated.”

That doesn’t sound good. At all. “What does that mean?”

“They’re putting him through school again, what does it sound like?” Han snaps. Chan flinches away, startled, and Han catches himself, groans and hunches and digs the heels of his palms into his eyes. Making himself smaller. “I’m—I’m sorry. Sensitive subject.” He slumps back again and heaves a breath. On the exhale he seems to shrink even further. “Their curriculum on humans is… medieval, at best. Comparable to how humans view—view animals. He’s gonna get that shit beat into his head until he can’t remember either of us. Not that he—” His head falls back onto the shelf with a thunk. “—cares about me.” 

“Did you believe it?” Chan asks. “Their stance on humans.”

“It was all I ever got on the topic, so yeah.” Han looks to the side. “Everyone except Jeongin and Felix acted like they thought I might go feral any moment. Hard to ignore that shit.”

“You’re human?” Chan blurts, stunned. He’d thought… well, Felix hadn’t given him a lot of information, but he’d assumed Han was fae. 

Han picks his head up to give him a look of pure incredulity. “Felix didn’t tell you. No, of course he didn’t. It would look bad, wouldn’t it, quote unquote  _ protecting _ you from me if you knew I was his human  _ pet _ for years.” 

“I—” Chan frowns. It would look bad. It looks bad still, now. “Was he… did he hurt you?”

“Not how you’re thinking,” Han says. “Not physically. We adored each other, he wouldn’t hurt me like that. But he gaslit me constantly, he practically owned me and I could never forget it, he—the day I left, he turned me in, and when I got free he chased me across the globe to catch me, to bring me back to a place where I’d continue to get mistreated and looked down on. He didn’t… he didn’t understand, and my unhappiness wasn’t enough to convince him that—we have feelings, y’know? But you were, I guess. He took that leap for you.” 

He rubs his temples, taps something on the shelf so a hologram of a globe (plus extras—layers that hurt Chan’s head and eyes to look at, presumably alternate dimensions) appears between them. 

“He’s not a threat, to me. I want you to know that.” The globe spins, halts in a position, all the layers frozen as well. “I don’t have to look for him. But I’ll find him for you. Getting thrown into a world you don’t understand… When I left for the human world I struggled, but I had Hyun—someone to help me along.” Han looks up, meets his eyes for the first time since that day in the living room, after Chan had helped Changbin clean up the kitchen. Chan isn’t sure what he’s seeing in them, but for the shortest moment, he has the strongest urge to close the distance between them and give him the biggest hug. 

“You don’t deserve the hell they’ve given you. The least I can do is make sure you don’t go through it alone.” 

_ Neither do you, _ Chan thinks, staring, as Han refocusses on his work, seemingly completely forgetting Chan’s presence. He’s still hunched in on himself, making himself small. Chan wonders if it’s a defense mechanism, so ingrained in him he never was able to unlearn it. Protection in the only way he could, when he was young. There’s a weight that pulls him down, too. Responsibility that once shouldered cannot be set down. 

And Chan can’t help but wonder what it will take for Atlas to shrug. 

* * *

It gets a little easier after that.

He’s still on edge, still anxious over Felix, but Han’s stopped pretending he doesn’t exist, and Chan feels… better, he supposes is the right word, about Han. It helps knowing he’s human. Whatever’s going on with his eyes and his magic aside—he’s human. It’s strangely comforting. Chan knows he himself is only half human but he feels more human than not due to his upbringing, and it’s nice to know he isn’t alone here. 

(“Seungmin, too,” Han tells him when he asks about human presence in the supernatural world. “And Minho, technically. Very technically. Human mages aren’t super common, but th—we’re not rare.”

Chan catches the slip. He wonders if it comes from Han associating himself with fae, or if there’s something he’s just not saying.)

Changbin’s also looser, now that Chan and Han don’t have tension. He’s freer with his smiles and Chan actually walked in on him doing aegyo at Han for some reason—they were arguing over dinner, he’d found out later, after backing out of the room. Changbin’s also more generous with physical contact, which is really, really nice, because Chan has been starved for it—going from Felix’s constant presence to nothing at all was a lot. Felix is always up for cuddles, and Chan got used to that. Too used to it, too comfortable. 

But Changbin’s hugging him now, skinship where he wasn’t before, and it’s nice. Sana hugs him too, sometimes. Not as often, but still sometimes. He doesn’t see her much, either, but that’s more due to her own schedule, not so much Han trying to restrict him. 

And Han doesn’t restrict him, not anymore. He and Changbin just ask Chan to tell them if he’s going out and if possible have one of them or Sana accompany him, because while most of Haven’s residents are good people, you never know… 

“Hey.” 

Chan startles, and Minho just laughs at him. “When did you get here?”

“Just now,” Minho says, plopping down next to him and leaning in slightly. Chan rolls his eyes and pulls him down so they’re cuddling.

Minho had actually apologized, after Chan stopped actively avoiding him. He gave him the whole story, the motivations behind it, etc, and had seemed so actually remorseful that Chan decided that, well, they all started off with quite a few misconceptions—it’ll be fine to start over. 

And he’s glad he had, because Minho is his #2 source for skinship. He may act like he doesn’t want it, but then he’ll make eyes or lean just a bit too far into Chan’s space, and hover, passive-aggressively, until Chan initiates a hug. 

Seungmin hates it. Minho told Chan quietly about how Seungmin got jealous enough watching them talk at Toast to apologize for something, which was what Chan had overheard Han and Changbin talking about that one day. It was a whole thing. Apparently they’re still not fully okay, but they’re back on again… 

“Are you just here to bother me?”

“Minnie has to talk to Hannie about something,” Minho says, shrugging. “I tagged along.” 

Seungmin doesn’t hate Chan, he just hates that Minho likes Chan. Which is fine. Seungmin’s actually perfectly pleasant to speak to when Minho’s not around, and Chan finds he enjoys his company. He just needs to be careful when Minho shows up. 

Still. Minho’s a nice break from the intensity that is Han and Changbin and whatever the thickness in the air between the three of them is. Minho’s different. 

“Sana told me more about the properties of some of the flowers,” Chan says. “Today was a poisons day.”

“Oh,” Minho says, delighted. “The poisonous ones are always the prettiest. Did she show you—” He lists names Chan hasn’t ever heard before, but he does recognize one from Sana’s impromptu lecture, so he nods along. 

_ They are,  _ Chan agrees internally. They all stood tall and bold and gorgeous, daring passersby, saying  _ eat me _ without saying it outright. __

Han joins them, later, Seungmin trailing after him and glaring at Chan, and then Minho gives Han a hug and tugs Seungmin out of the room. Han watches them go with a wry grin. 

Chan’s fingers itch. He writes down words in secret, that night, burns them before the sun rises. Poison flowers, and what they do to you. 

* * *

Still, aside from a few minor bumps, Chan sort of… settles in, he supposes. It’s as normal as the three of them could possibly get, until. 

One day, Han is out and Changbin is out so it’s just him, in the apartment. He’s taken up cooking (he’s definitely amateur but he’s trying) because Changbin doesn’t even know how to crack an egg and Han is infinitely lazy, he’s discovered. Though Chan will admit that if he had the range of power to just sit down and conjure a fully cooked meal without breaking a sweat, he’d do it as well. Sometimes, though, Han’s too tired, or his magic doesn’t cooperate, and Chan takes initiative to swoop in. 

(Chan doesn’t doubt that he could do it, if he put a little more into it, but the point of the whole thing is to take the “optimal path”, as Han had complained once when Changbin teased him for it. Mages of all kinds are constantly generating magic and can only hold so much—at some point if it’s not used it gets discarded. So Han uses the magic set to be discarded, and doesn’t ever dip into his actual magic reserves. One of the reasons he’s powerful, Chan assumes, is because he generates fast enough that his power output is consistently higher than most others, and he can afford to spend that output on trivial shit like making dinner.)

So Chan takes what they have in the kitchen and cooks. 

It just so happens that today is one of those days—he’s alone in the kitchen and Han and Changbin are elsewhere, and he’s fine with that. He’s pulling together the ingredients to make tteokbokki when there’s a crash in the hall. 

But he’s alone. 

He sets the chilli powder down as quiet as he can. 

There’s another crash, and he backs up instinctively, eyes glued to the door. He doesn’t have a way to contact Han or Changbin, doesn’t have a way to get their attention unless he strains one of Han’s spells—the protection spell, maybe, but then Han might be too late… the detection spell that tells him if Chan’s left, maybe? But the noise is coming from between him and the exit. The only good thing about this is that he’s in the kitchen, and the kitchen has knives. 

The door slams open while he’s distracted, and he’s left gaping at the… glittering… pompom? Hovering in the doorway. 

It dives for him. 

He ducks, hastens to the side and tries to get around it, to get to the door before it does, but it does something that quite frankly actually fucking hurts, the impact point stinging and red when he glances down to inspect it. 

It moves to do it again, and Chan leaps back, hand coming down instinctively, wrapping around something that isn’t there— _ the knife. _

How had he forgotten?

The thing charges for him, and he scrambles out of the way, tugging the knife with him. It’s small, handle a clear resin with preserved flowers, and a black blade—Felix had given it to him as a precaution. It’s just a knife. Albeit one he can magically store, somehow. But still—

He swipes at it, and it dodges, making a weird whirring noise, and dives for him again. He can’t react fast enough, ducking on instinct, closing his eyes—when a loud  _ BONG  _ resonates through the room and the thing shakes, falling a bit like it’s lost balance. 

Han appears in the doorway, livid. Changbin peeks over his shoulder, holding what looks like a gong. “Hey,” Han snaps, flicking his fingers to draw the thing to him. “You shouldn’t be here.”

It squeaks, trying to squirm away. Changbin edges past Han to approach Chan. “Did it hurt you?”

“I,” Chan says, nearly dropping the knife. His hands shake, and he finds he can’t bring himself to pry his fingers off, knuckles whitening on the handle. 

Changbin’s gaze is drawn to it but he doesn’t comment. “Come here.” 

His hands are warm on Chan’s cheeks, thumbs brushing under his eyes, pulling him so their foreheads are resting together. Chan matches his breathing instinctively, even as something cool begins to ooze through his body, like someone’s drizzling cold gel over his skin. It’s soothing, like aloe—maybe the magical equivalent. 

“Better?”

Chan’s surprised to find that he is, so he nods, head still trapped in Changbin’s grasp. Changbin smiles down at him slightly, before releasing him and helping him to his feet. “Thanks.”

“It shouldn’t have gotten loose,” Changbin says, squinting accusatory at Han, who’s still standing in the doorway. 

Han’s jaw clenches but he otherwise doesn’t react, placing a lid on a jar that now presumably contains the thing. “It’s not mine.”

“What?” Changbin drops Chan’s hands like they’ve burned him, attention fully on Han in a moment. “But you said—”

“It’s not,” Han repeats. “Someone sent a sprite after Chan. It’s like the letters—it can find him but not lead them to him—but it’s set to kill. Either they don’t know he’s with me, or...” 

“Or?”

He frowns down at the jar. 

“Or?” Chan echoes.

“Han,” Changbin says emphatically. “Or what?”

He looks up at them, expression unreadable. “Nevermind.”

“Baby,” Changbin starts, but Han shakes his head. 

“It’s nothing.”

It doesn’t seem like nothing.

“I want to learn,” Chan says, suddenly. He doesn’t know where the confidence comes from. He nearly got killed by a glorified glittery pompom, he has no leg to stand on here. He should just let them keep protecting him, but. “Lix didn’t tell me much about what I am, but he said something about capacity, right? Capacity for magic? So I can learn.”

“You learn,” Han tells him after a moment of consideration, “your price goes up.” 

“I don’t care,” Chan says. “I want to be able to protect myself.”

Han looks to Changbin, who looks right back, eyebrow raised almost challengingly. “Okay.”

Honestly, Chan was expecting more of a fight. “Okay?”

He squints at him. “Do you meditate?”

“Do I—yes? I mean, sometimes. Not often.”

“Two days at least,” Han says. “Meditate for thirty minutes both in the morning and before bed. Organize your mind. Don’t ask what that means,” he adds, raising a hand against Chan gearing up to do just that. “You’ll figure it out. Do what makes sense to you. Not to me, or Changbin—to you.”

What the hell does that even mean? 

“Okay,” Chan agrees.

“On Friday, I’ll wake you up at six,” Han says. Chan makes a face, and he knows by now that Han’s also not a morning person so why… “If your style ends up being compatible with mine, I’ll teach you. If not, which is, honestly, more likely—Seungmin can try, then Minho, then Changbin. If we have to resort to Sana,” he shrugs. “We’ll cross that bridge later.”

Style? Chan wonders. He’d thought there was only one kind of magic, but. He supposes not. 

Two days with meditation. That’s not so bad, for homework.

* * *

Two days passes quickly. Chan still forgets, until he’s shaken awake by Han at six in the morning, when the sun isn’t even fully up yet, and he just wants to roll over and go back to sleep. But Han doesn’t let that happen, poking at his side until Chan squirms. 

Han’s a little too amused when Chan finally follows him out of the bedroom. Chan doesn’t want to know what he looks like right now, bed head and still attempting to forcefully evacuate the sleep from his eyes. 

“We’re going to the beach,” Han tells him. It’s not really what he expected to hear, but he supposes wide open space is better for magic training than inside their very flammable house. 

Before they leave, though, Han makes vague grabby hands at the kitchen and things start shifting around. Chan can hear some sizzling, so he’s assuming Han’s magically cooking something instead of magically conjuring fully-cooked meals, which is what he usually does. He wonders why he’s putting in this much effort, this morning. In a few minutes the noises stop and two paper-wrapped sandwiches float out to them. Han plucks his out of the air with a yawn, and Chan follows suit. 

Haven is sleepy, this morning. Chan trails after Han, following his path, but the heavy blue tint of the barely-there sunlight washes over the houses, the trees. It’s quiet, too. Not that it isn’t usually quiet—Chan’s not sure of the population count, but it’s a fairly calm town, in general. Barely a rustle in the curtains of windows in homes, not a single movement outside Chan and Han’s hurried gait. There’s no wind, this morning. Chan finds himself shivering anyway. He basks in the warmth the sandwich gives his hands, and unwraps it a bit to take a bite. 

It’s good. Eggy with a bit of ham, cabbage. A light dusting of sugar. The toasted bread makes a satisfying noise when his teeth sink in. 

“I’ll teach you what I can,” Han tells him, snapping the silence in half like a twig. Unaware of whatever spell Chan had felt he was under, with the weight of that absence. “But I was taught unconventionally, and my magic…” His face does the thing it does when he wants to explain himself but knows he’ll come off as condescending. Chan’s seen that face a lot, lately. “...It’s too different.”

“How, unconventionally?” Chan asks. 

Han snorts. “You’ll see.”

Ominous. 

The beach is, of course, also quiet. The ocean makes ocean noises, which are nice and, honestly, remind Chan a bit of home, but his tension’s ramped up a bit, especially now with Han’s comment. And yeah, he was the one who asked to learn, but maybe he was being too hasty. Maybe he should just stick to his emergency knife and Han coming to the rescue. 

Who’s he kidding, he can’t rely on Han forever. Might as well learn while he’s here. Teach a man to fish, and all that. Felix didn’t go into an overt amount of detail on Han’s ability, but Chan’s seen it firsthand—and the terrifying aftereffects—so he’s guessing the man’s a good resource. 

“Look at me,” Han says. Chan does. Han’s eyes seem to sink, hints of the black inked cracks making a reappearance, and he says, in some strange tongue that Chan somehow understands, “ _ Reflected in my mirror. _ ”

The breath is punched out of Chan’s lungs. They both go down like dominos, but at the same time remain standing, the magic taking hold of them-but-not-them. Chan’s eyes roll back into his head and then he blinks and around them, the world is dark and full of metal. Like a warehouse. Fluorescent lights line the ceiling. There are pipes of some kind intersecting it. Beyond the pipes and the metal fence they line, there’s the start of a block of hedges. 

“What…” 

Han glances at Chan, then frowns at the pipes. “That’s weird.”

“Han, what the hell is this?” Chan’s head is pounding. He’s wearing all white. 

Han’s wearing all white too. Strange. “This is your mind.” 

“This is  _ what?” _ Chan demands, alarmed. 

“It’s a representation of it,” Han clarifies, wincing. “We’re not actually physically inside your head. This is just the easiest way to speedrun the learning process.”

Chan’s head’s hurting too much to question it.

“Your mind appears as you imagine it,” Han says. “Sometimes—usually—it’s a place you’re comfortable with. Not all the time. In some cases it’s not. That’s not the best explanation but… everything here holds meaning. Yeah?”

Chan looks at the pipes, then back at him. “I don’t… I’ve never been here before.”

“Ok, so we don’t have much to work with, but we’ll get there. Now—you don’t have much magic training, but you can—” Han taps Chan’s side lightly with four fingers. Chan, jumpy enough and reminded that the knife exists, makes to pull it out again. Han bares his teeth in a grin even as Chan fumbles and drops it on the floor. “—do that. I wanted to see you do it again.” He calls the knife to his hand with a twitch. “Since we’re in your head that gives you an advantage. Against most people that means you’ll have the upper hand.” The knife blinks out of existence and Chan’s thrown into the wall, pinned there by an invisible force, knife—he feels the wind from it landing—suddenly embedded between his legs, just short of his thigh. “Against me… you’ll fare better than you would in the real world, I’ll give you that.” 

Chan struggles to stand, blinking in confusion as gravity only allows him to stand sideways, feet to the wall. “What…?”

“Advanced tactics,” Han says dismissively. “We’ll get there, maybe. I’ll build you some temporary defenses anyway, but I think you’ll be okay.” 

“And if I’m not?” Han rights gravity and Chan jumps to the ground. 

“It won’t come to that.”

“But if it does?”

Han meets his eyes. “Not many people can one-up me in anything. If my defenses don’t hold, you’re as good as dead.”

Chan shudders. That’s not what he wanted to hear. 

“Now.” Han summons the knife to himself. “Get it back without recalling it.”

“What?”

Han twirls the knife between two fingers. His smile is predatory. “Get it back,” he repeats. 

* * *

Chan tries—he does. He tries his best but even with Han holding back—and he  _ is _ holding back—Han knocks him down in one blow at every attempt.

“Up,” Han says, for what feels like the hundredth time. Chan’s head is still pounding and his muscles are already weak from how many times he’s been slammed into the floor. “Come on.”

Before Felix had been taken he’d taught him a little about what he is—but just a little.  _ You don’t generate like we do,  _ he’d said.  _ Most of us recharge based on our own abilities, memories. You don’t. You absorb.  _

_ So I’m storage?  _ Chan had asked, mostly joking.

Felix laughed.  _ Something like that?  _

He’d said something about Chan inheriting magic capabilities from his father but a lack of magic from his mother. A weapon without ammo.

He hadn’t outright said the weapon analogy, but it was very implied.

So absorption. For a moment he’s not sure he can figure it out on his own but Felix had said something about it being automatic, hadn’t he?  _ That’s why your father kept you secret,  _ he said.  _ So you’d remain powerless until you were old enough your belief in him would be cemented. He was relying on your mother to speak well of him to you. But then… she decided to hide you. To keep you safe. _

Chan does recall a vaguely good impression of his father, but then when his mom sent him to college in Korea and told him not to trust anyone his dad sends and he’d thought it was weird but she’s his mom, of course he listened… 

And then he met Felix.

If Chan absorbs magic automatically, he should have a lot. That ambush… there was a lot of magic being thrown around. He should have at least some of it, right?

The question then becomes, how does he use it?

He dodges a blast, narrowly, and whirls on Han. 

“You were taking too long,” Han says. He wiggles the knife again.

Okay.

Chan dives for it again, and Han shifts, and Chan watches,  _ really  _ watches, seemingly in slow motion—and what he doesn’t know at the time, but Han tells him later, is that he shifted vision from the physical plane to one of the metaphysical, so he could  _ see _ the magic as it pulsed, and a small piece broke off to travel up Han’s arm and out his hand, a small blob like suspended water, wobbling, before something  _ kicks  _ it forward and it blasts in the direction it’s given. Chan dodges again. The next shot is different, no pause, no break, just a piece reaching out to him and grabbing on, tossing him onto a wall, where a mattress miraculously materializes and cushions his impact.

He looks inside himself, and sees… it’s different from Han, kind of. Han’s magic is sort of… everywhere? All encompassing, leaking everywhere, somehow here and somewhere else at once, making it… not here. But also here. He thinks he could trace it to a single secondary location if he put the time and effort in, but he keeps having to dodge attacks and that’s not really conducive to focus. So. 

Chan’s magic is singular. It’s in him, only, and it doesn’t leak, not like Han’s. It’s still… somewhat unresponsive. He can’t feel it; it’s not part of him.

But he has to have a way to reach it somehow, right?

...Where did this mattress come from?

“Focus, Chan,” Han yells, and Chan rolls under another kick-blast. At least he’s getting better at avoiding… 

But it’s his mind, right? Han had said that gives him an advantage. Mattress out of nowhere, no broken bones—he’s manipulating the space subconsciously. He has to be. So now, how does he make that manipulation conscious?

Gun, he thinks, and then his hand finds one at his hip.

Han squawks out a protest and it vanishes. “No guns! Very bad reaction with magic. Magic and guns is a big no!”

Damn. Sword? No. Close combat’s probably not feasible. Crossbow?

That might work. 

Han lets it stay, but he’s also very good at dodging. 

There’s a pattern. 

Listen, Chan’s very good at music. He’s spent his entire life gunning for the kind of production prestige where he can be selective with who he produces for—he’s spent hours, days, months,  _ years _ perfecting his ear, his craft. He can pick out intervals and arpeggios out of noise by name, he has relative pitch, he hears a pattern and he recognizes it for what it is. 

This, this is a pattern. Han does the same spells, or more accurately, the same  _ kinds _ of spells, if he ventures to call it that. They’re not too complex, the sigils are five strokes max, and the result is always visibly apparent. Nothing mental or manipulative or anything like that. Han is definitely capable of more—he does more sending Changbin whiny messages during the day about how he’s bored and alone and keeps following trails that get cold “so at this point what’s the point? I’d rather be home with you” than he’s doing now. 

There’s one kick-blast that Chan knows shoots fire. The sigil is just—circle, line, fork—

He traces it in the air and nothing happens. Of course. 

Han sees him do it, though, and lets up for a moment. 

So Chan tries again. He thinks about the kick, how Han drew the magic up into his hand—and tries again. 

Circle, line, fork.

The magic lingers in the air for a moment, and Chan can feel his palm heat, slightly, and imagines… like in middle school, when kids would flick rubber bands across the room. Tightening tension, elasticity, and… snap. 

It works. 

Fire erupts from his palm, red and sweltering hot, reaching so far Han actually jumps out of the way. 

“Ah,” Han says, delighted. “Good.”

And then he’s dousing Chan in a torrent of water, and Chan has to shake himself like a dog, spluttering. No break, then. 

Damn.

* * *

They return to the house by dinnertime. Han had let Chan take two breaks, one for a snack and one for lunch—bibimbap, which they bought from the little restaurant by the water—but other than that he’d pressed on. Chan finally managed to get the knife back, sometime after lunch (yes, Han was holding back. Significantly. Chan’s very aware), and Han moved on to teaching him a shield and seeing how long he could keep it up under stress. 

(Not that long, apparently. Physical stamina does not equate magical stamina.)

By the time they head back, Chan wants to collapse, but Han’s bouncing ahead of him, buzzing with self-satisfaction. How… how does he have that much energy?

“I take it today went well?”

Han beams up at Changbin and sort of… fizzes out of existence, before reappearing at the top of the stairs to glomp him. “Hi! Yes. Very well. It’s complicated. I’ll update you later. I’m huuuuuuungryyyyyy.” He disappears into the kitchen, leaving Changbin and Chan to exchange what-the-hell looks in his wake. 

“He’s… energetic,” Changbin says. 

Chan shrugs. He has no clue. 

“I want chicken,” Han yells, muffled by several walls. 

“Sounds good!” Changbin calls back. “Do you want me to order?”

“Yeah.”

“Chicken?” He asks Chan. 

Chan shrugs. “Sure.”

The climb up the stairs is suddenly much more exhausting than usual. Changbin grins at him, amused, when he finally reaches the top and immediately leans on him for support. “Tired?”

“Mm.” He squints, because keeping his eyes fully open is hard. A hand runs through his hair, and he leans into the touch, eyes fluttering closed, because it feels so, so nice… 

“I want honey butter.”

Chan half yelps in surprise, and only doesn’t fall over because Changbin grabs his waist. He’s completely awake now, blinking rapidly at the light and finally focusing on Han, who’s standing in the doorway, face fully blank. 

Oh. That didn’t look good, did it. Changbin’s hand burns a hole in his awareness, settled just above his hip. Chan’s own arm is slung over Changbin’s shoulders. 

Changbin doesn’t seem to notice, nodding to what Han said and doing something with his free hand. “Chan?”

“Uh,” Chan says. Han’s gaze pins him down but when he moves to pull away Changbin’s grip only tightens, so he gives up. “Um. Just. Plain? Or cheesy.”

“Cheesy it is. Okay, should be here in fifteen.” He releases Chan’s waist, thankfully, and pecks Han’s cheek as he passes by, leaving Chan still pinned (figuratively) to the bannister. 

Han gives him one last inscrutable glance, before turning and following him in. 

Chan allows himself to breathe. 

It should be fine. It’ll be fine. If Han has a problem with Chan touching his husband then he’d bring it up to Changbin, and Changbin would tell Chan. Right?

Right. 

* * *

“We are alarmingly compatible.” 

This comes out of nowhere. Chan nearly spews his mouthful of chicken, but thankfully he keeps it in and forcefully swallows it down. “What?”

Han looks across at him, and his expression is still frustratingly blank. “We’re alarmingly compatible.”

“No, I heard you, but.”

But Han is powerful as hell and Chan is glorified storage. Also, whatever camaraderie they had going just an hour before is completely gone because Chan couldn’t keep his hands to himself, so. Han’s notion of compatibility leaves much to be desired. 

“You pick up my methods easily,” Han says. “I honestly doubt you’ll have better luck with anyone else. We can try, but—”

“No,” Chan says hastily. Han raises an eyebrow and he rushes to add, “I just—too many people in my mind is… an unnerving thought. I can… if you think it’ll work, then I’m fine with that.”

“Okay,” Han says. Chan thinks he sounds pleased but he’s really not sure. 

“It’s because of the mix thing, isn’t it?” Changbin asks, chin in his hands, watching them like a tennis match. 

“I’m not fae,” Han says. “Even if I was taught their methods originally—it wouldn’t matter.”

“But the other thing—”

“Different,” Han dismisses quickly, sparing a glance at Chan, who tries not to look too intrigued. “It’s different.”

“If you say so.”

“I’m human,” Han insists. “Seungmin would be just as effective.”

Changbin stares at him. Chan wishes he could tell what he’s thinking because there’s just… just a bit of pity there. Or sorrow. Or something. “I’m sure he would be.”

Chan is, himself, clinging to the last vestiges of his humanity, and he’s only ever been half. It seems Han’s in the same boat, but why… why, when Felix called him human, when he called himself human, when he was treated human by the court? What makes Han different? 

_ He’s more powerful than he seems.  _

He’s something, alright. And now, Chan really wants to know what. 

Maybe, with these lessons, he’ll find out. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the plot thickens
> 
> *deep breath* clio video chan tinee im losing my MIND why is he so SMALL what the FUCK
> 
> throwback to when i had relative pitch smh (i can do most of the rest of it still but i Cant Name Notes Anymore and it Makes Me Sad)
> 
> my music theory ability has fallen Horribly. rip my ears. all i want is to rememorize 440 hz but i do not have the time or energy or memory capacity. my storage is Full i have no space to allocate. much like my computer
> 
> OOH in other news i joined a fic fest! im excited. ive never actually done one before, ive done exchanges (on a dif account for a dif fandom) but those are different. so idk what i can share but i am Vibrating at this prompt and the pairing i picked... might make chan evil in it tho oops i need a villain... i swear hes my bias i just,,,,,, hh

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/drizzlyslimecat)  
> i dont use it much but ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯  
> lmk what u think <3 comments fuel me


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